,v,.  i.at.  A  vy?  -  ^  y,  ^  C-  c?. 


PROCEEDINGS 

of 

THE  SEMINAR 

on 

RELATIONS  with  MEXICO 


MEXICO  CITY 
January  i  -  i  o,  1927 


Published  by 

THE  SEMINAR  ON  RELATIONS  WITH  MEXICO 
Hubert  C.  Herring,  Director 
14  Beacon  Street,  Boston,  Mass. 


Copies  of  this  record  can  be  ordered  from 
Hubert  C.  Herring,  14  Beacon  Street,  Boston,  Mass. 
Please  send  check  with  order;  $1.50  per  copy 


Gjforewo7'd 


THE  SEMINAR  ON  RELATIONS  WITH  MEXICO 

JANUARY,  1927 

A  GROUP  of  thirty-seven  men  and  women  spent  Janu¬ 
ary  1-10  in  Mexico  City  and  vicinity.  They  went  with 
one  purpose :  to  know  more  of  Mexico,  her  people  and 
their  problems.  They  talked  with  the  leaders  of  the  political, 
economic,  educational,  cultural  and  religious  life  of  Mexico. 
They  endeavored  to  hear  both  sides  of  the  controversial  issues 
which  loom  so  large.  They  listened  to  addresses  which  were 
frankly  propaganda  in  character,  and  balanced  them  with 
other  addresses  which  were  frankly  critical.  They  came 
away  with  some  feeling  for  the  land  and  its  people,  some 
knowledge  of  the  facts,  and  some  apperception  of  the  needs 
of  the  country.  They  did  not  presume  to  make  any  report 
of  their  findings,  but  simply  to  pass  on  what  they  had  seen 
and  heard.  This  they  do  for  what  it  may  be  worth. 

The  present  situation  between  the  United  States  and  Mex¬ 
ico  illustrates  the  need  for  this  kind  of  friendly  interchange 
between  the  peoples  of  the  two  lands.  Those  of  us  who  have 
been  privileged  to  know  some  of  the  leaders  in  Mexico,  and 
to  hear  from  their  own  lips  the  account  of  the  struggles 
through  which  they  pass,  return  to  our  own  country  sincerely 
anxious  to  promote  that  intelligent  friendship  without  which 
there  can  be  neither  peace  nor  stability. 

Unfortunately,  not  all  the  proceedings  are  recorded  in  this 
booklet,  because  some  of  the  stenographic  notes  were  de¬ 
stroyed  by  fire. 


Hubert  C.  Herring. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


The  Historic  Background  of  Mexico^  Carleton  Beals  ....  5 

The  Labor  Viewpoint^  Roberto  Haberman . 9 

Social  Groups  and  Leading  Personalities^  Carleton  Beals  ...  14 

The  Oil  Situation  in  Mexico,  Walter  Frank . 19 

Legal  Aspects  of  the  Oil  SiTUATioN/i^fl7?z/Vez  Carrillo  ....  26 

Interviews  with  the  Catholic  Bishops . 32 

Interview  with  President  Calles . 39 

The  University  of  Mexico^  Alfonso  Pruneda . 46 

Public  Education  in  Mexico^  Puig  Casauranc . 50 

The  Educational  System,  Aloises  Saenz . 53 

Business  Conditions  in  Mexico,  George  ll^ytlie . 56 

The  Ancient  Cultures  of  Mexico,  Professor  Alendizabal  ...  60 


THE  HISTORIC  BACKGROUND  OF  MEXICO 

By  Carleton  Beals 

I  THINK  it  would  be  well  for  me  to  begin  this  morning  with  a  little 
study  in  comparative  psychology.  When  I  was  going  through  the  Vera 
Cruz  customs  some  years  ago  I  bumped  into  an  Irish  girl  who  was 
having  a  fight  with  a  customs  official.  She  was  arguing  in  a  brogue  that 
left  no  doubt  as  to  her  nationality,  and  he  was  talking  in  Spanish.  The 
fight  was  over  some  children’s  shoes  that  she  was  bringing  in  with  her.  The 
official  told  her  that  she  would  have  to  pay  duty  on  these  shoes.  She  was 
going,  as  I  found  out,  to  get  married  to  a  Mexican  boy  who  had  been  em¬ 
ployed  in  her  office  in  New  York.  She  was  also  going  to  visit  some  friends 
in  Cuernavaca  to  whom  she  was  taking  these  shoes.  The  customs  official 
looked  over  her  papers  and  saw  that  she  was  unmarried  and  that  therefore 
these  shoes  could  not  be  for  her  own  children ;  but  I  butted  in  and  said, 
“You  know,  the  young  lady  is  coming  down  to  get  married!”  The  customs 
official  looked  at  her,  and  again  at  her  papers  which  bore  out  this  fact,  then 
shook  his  head  and  passed  her  through,  saying,  “These  Americans  are  so 
practical !” 

It  is  difficult  for  the  Mexican  mind  to  comprehend  the  American  and  so 
he  imputes  to  it  many  queer  things,  but  let  us  now  see  how  close  we  can 
come  to  an  understanding  of  the  Mexican  national  temper. 

When  Cortez  landed  in  Mexico  in  1519  there  was  at  that  time  in  exist¬ 
ence  the  Aztec  Empire  which  was  composed  of  four  or  five  groups  of  highly 
civilized  races.  The  Aztec  empire  had  reached  its  highest  period  of  develop¬ 
ment  some  seventy-five  years  before  Cortez  appeared  on  the  scene.  Of  these 
groups,  rather  loosely  allied,  which  made  up  the  empire,  the  largest  and  most 
important  was  the  Nahuas,  a  race  living  mostly  along  the  mountains  of  the 
western  coast.  Before  the  coming  of  the  Nahuas  was  an  earlier  race,  the 
origin  of  which  is  unknown,  called  the  Toltecs.  They  migrated  from  the 
North  about  700  A.  D.  The  earlier  group  was  replaced  by  the  Nahuas,  of 
which  the  Aztecs  were  a  tribe.  The  late  comers  adopted  the  civilization 
already  there.  A  superior  race  was  the  Maya,  occupying  the  territory  about 
Yucatan  and  extending  to  Honduras  and  parts  of  Salvador.  Each  of  these 
tribes  left  certain  relics  of  their  civilization,  and  certain  definite  contributions 
to  the  parts  of  the  country  which  they  occupied.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
Isthmus  of  Tehuantepec  are  today  a  distinct  race,  living  largely  apart  from 
the  rest  of  Mexico. 

As  you  will  see,  when  Cortez  came,  he  faced  a  much  different  situation 
than  the  European  settlers  in  the  north.  They  came,  largely,  to  colonize, 
but  the  Spanish  came  to  conquer  a  new  land,  to  get  rich  quick,  and  to  go 
back  to  the  homeland.  The  English  and  the  other  Europeans  brought  their 
wives  and  their  household  goods  and  settled  on  the  lands  they  came  to.  The 
Spaniards  came  in  the  spirit  of  adventure  and  mixed  with  the  native  women 
and  left  behind  them  an  unhappy  trail  of  Mestizos  (mixed  bloods).  The 
Europeans  in  the  north,  finding  a  warlike  people,  gradually  pushed  them 
back  and  exterminated  them.  They  did  not  need  the  labor  of  the  natives, 
but  the  Spanish  did.  In  the  exploitation  of  the  labor  of  the  natives  was  their 
greatest  wealth.  And  therefore  Spain  built  up  a  civilization  here  on  the 
foundation  of  the  native. 


6 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Due  to  these  facts  there  developed  a  situation  in  the  colonial  period  which 
I  shall  briefly  try  to  sketch  for  you : 

We  have,  first  of  all,  an  imposed  race,  the  Spaniards,  whose  privileges 
were  carefully  safeguarded.  At  one  time  it  was  a  criminal  offense  for  any¬ 
body  to  set  foot  in  a  boat  going  from  Mexico  to  Spain  or  Spain  to  the  New 
World  without  the  permission  of  the  Governor  of  the  Indies.  A  strict  ruling 
group  was  built  up  in  the  Spanish  colonies.  The  rights,  political  and  social, 
were  restricted  to  this  group  by  the  Spanish  crown  in  Spain.  The  colonies 
were  run  with  a  closeness  of  control  which  guaranteed  all  their  wealth  to  the 
mother  country.  In  other  words,  we  have  at  the  top  of  the  scale,  a  restricted 
Spanish  group.  The  Creole,  the  native  born  Spaniard,  was  quite  beneath 
this  group  in  his  privileges.  Very  few  Creoles  ever  became  vice-roys.  It  was 
only  toward  the  end  of  the  colonial  period,  when  the  colonial  administration 
broke  down,  that  this  people  began  to  emerge.  Many  of  the  Creoles,  who 
formed  the  second  group  in  the  social  and  political  scale,  were  wealthy  but 
without  the  privileges  of  the  Spanish  born.  The  third  group  in  this  rigid 
caste  system,  was  the  Mestizos,  offspring  of  Spanish  fathers  and  Indian 
mothers.  It  was  a  large  group,  naturally,  but  was  carefully  held  down. 
Beneath  these  was  the  Indian,  the  conquered  race ;  the  lowest  in  the  scale, 
without  political  rights,  without  a  voice  in  the  colonial  government,  without 
any  control  over  his  own  destiny.  He  was  considered  as  a  chattel,  his  lot 
was  more  miserable,  perhaps,  than  that  of  any  other  people  in  the  history  of 
the  world.  There  were  a  few  humanitarian  attempts  in  Spain  to  ameliorate 
his  condition,  but  they  were  never  seriously  carried  out.  The  Church  worked 
for  the  protection  of  the  Indian,  at  first,  and  there  were  some  great  princes 
of  the  Church  who  stood  out  nobly  for  his  betterment,  but  gradually  the 
religious  conquest  became  more  and  more  like  that  of  Spain  and  the  Church 
worked  less  and  less  in  behalf  of  the  Indian. 

There  was,  therefore,  a  heterogeneous  system  in  which  the  Indian,  without 
any  rights  whatsoever,  without  any  means  of  protecting  himself,  kept  in 
ignorance  and  shut  out  from  all  political  affairs,  in  which — by  this  time — he 
was  little  fitted  to  take  an  interest — a  heterogeneous  system  in  which  this 
Indian  was  the  base  and  imposed  upon  him  was  the  Roman  Spanish  Church 
of  Mexico  which  (aside  from  a  handful  of  conscientious  priests  who  left 
lucrative  positions  in  the  old  world  to  endure  hardships  in  the  new)  soon 
became  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  wealthy  factors  of  government  in  the 
new  world  and  became  practically  its  dominating  force.  There  was  also  the 
gradual  development  of  the  army  caste  and  the  development  of  a  foreign 
land-holding  class,  to  the  members  of  which  were  given  millions  of  acres, 
whole  states.  Practically  the  whole  state  of  Oaxaca  was  given  away  in  one 
grant  to  one  family,  given  away  in  fee  simple,  taken  from  the  Indians. 

There  were  three  kinds  of  grants  made  by  the  Spanish  crown ;  the  grant 
for  pasturage,  the  grant  in  fee  simple  for  agricultural  purposes,  and  the  grant 
for  subsoil  or  mineral  rights.  The  grants  given  were  mostly  pasturage  and 
agricultural  grants;  the  mining  grants  were  distinctly  separate,  and  were 
given  generally  for  grounds  where  the  Spaniards  found  mines  already  in 
operation. 

This,  then,  was  the  state  of  Mexico,  prior  to  the  war  for  independence 

(1810-21). 

The  tragic  thing  about  the  Mexican  war  for  independence  is  that  while 
it  was  indirectly  influenced  by  the  ideals  of  the  French  and  the  American 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


7 


revolutions,  it  was  primarily  a  movement  by  the  Creole  class  to  free  them¬ 
selves  from  the  heavy  taxes  of  the  Spanish  government  which  had  become 
most  onerous.  But  independence  did  not  help  the  Indian.  The  reactionary 
Mexican  government  was  established  on  the  basis  of  a  Catholicism  far  more 
intolerant  than  that  in  Spain  at  the  time.  The  movement  for  Mexican  inde¬ 
pendence  was  not  for  freedom  but  was  a  reactionary  movement  coming  at  a 
time  when  the  old  world  was  being  attacked  by  Napoleon  and  the  old  order 
was  passing.  The  Creoles  wished  to  shut  out  the  changes  of  the  old  world 
and  to  keep  the  new  political  system  from  taking  root  in  Mexico.  With  the 
coming  of  the  idea  of  democracy  came  the  development  of  a  federal  army 
whose  overbearing  and  egotistical  officers  imposed  its  will  upon  a  people  who, 
having  been  submerged  for  three  centuries,  were  easy  prey  to  such  efforts. 

Juarez,  however,  and  the  revolution  which  he  headed,  introduced  a  new 
epoch  in  Mexico.  The  Constitution  of  1857,  which  was  adopted  at  the 
conclusion  of  that  revolution,  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  great  documents  of 
the  world,  together  with  the  Reform  Laws  of  1859.  This,  more  than  any¬ 
thing  else,  helped  to  put  Mexico  upon  a  modern  basis  and  made  possible  an 
era  of  peace,  even  though  the  work  of  Juarez  was  so  soon  to  be  interrupted 
by  the  invasion  of  the  French  and  the  establishment  of  Maximilian  as  Em¬ 
peror.  This  invasion  was  encouraged  by  the  Catholic  Archbishop  of  Mexico, 
who  went  to  Europe  to  bring  about  such  intervention. 

There  followed,  not  long  after  Maximilian’s  death,  the  period  of  Porfirio 
Diaz,  who  remained  in  power,  with  the  exception  of  a  four-year  break,  for 
thirty-four  years.  This  thirty-year  rule  of  Diaz  saw  a  shift  in  the  economic 
basis  of  Mexico.  Under  Diaz,  Mexico  passed  from  the  economic  domina¬ 
tion  of  the  Church  to  the  economic  domination  of  foreign  capital.  Aside  from 
Spain,  there  was  prior  to  1857  little  foreign  investment  in  Mexico.  Americans 
who  originally  owned  practically  nothing  in  Mexico,  came  under  Diaz  to 
own,  roughly,  78  per  cent  of  the  mines,  72  per  cent  of  the  smelters,  58  per 
cent  of  the  oil  and  68  per  cent  of  the  rubber,  and  great  tracts  of  land,  espec¬ 
ially  in  the  north  of  Mexico — much  of  it  acquired  legitimately  for  invest¬ 
ment  purposes,  much  of  it  acquired  otherwise.  Many  of  the  lands  given 
away  to  the  cientificos  and  others  who  surrounded  Diaz  were  Indian  com¬ 
munal  lands  which  under  the  Constitution  could  not  be  sold  or  bartered. 

It  is  obvious  that  no  stable  regime  could  be  built  on  such  a  system  of 
property  holding.  In  no  land  in  the  world  could  there  have  been  a  stable 
regime  under  such  conditions.  And  as  I  see  the  question,  until  1910,  when 
Diaz  lost  his  power,  Mexico  was  still  a  super-state  based  on  class  rule  rather 
than  democracy.  In  other  words,  Mexico,  had  not,  up  to  1910,  become  a 
bonafide  nation. 

In  1910  came  the  revolution  of  Madero.  The  earlier  program  of  Madero 
showed  little  grasp  of  the  agrarian  and  economic  problems  of  the  country. 
In  Mexico  there  was  no  philosophic  background  for  the  revolution.  It  just 
happened.  It  was  a  pragmatic  revolution,  finally  ending  up  in  the  Queretero 
Constitution  of  1917,  which  was  adopted  to  solve  certain  problems  up  to  that 
time.  The  most  notable  ideas  were  antagonism  to  the  Church,  a  strong 
Indian  influence,  a  reaction  against  existing  industrial  conditions,  and  an 
attempt  to  reserve  Mexico  for  the  Mexicans.  The  people  clamored  for 
means  of  popular  expression  heretofore  denied  them.  During  the  p.eriod  of 
independence  there  was  no  real  form  of  popular  organization.  The  present 
period  is  the  first  since  the  conquest  in  which  the  Mexican  people  have  found 


8 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


a  means  of  achieving  popular  organization.  The  attempt  at  popular  organi¬ 
zation  is  something  new  and  heretofore  untried  in  Mexican  history.  There 
is  a  tendency  toward  social  organization  of  popular  groups  attempting  to  work 
out  problems  involved,  rather  than  having  them  solved  by  selfish  or  egotistical 
and  unfriendly  ruling  groups. 

The  period  of  reconstruction  following  the  revolution  includes  the  admin¬ 
istrations  of  Carranza,  Obregon  and  Calles.  There  are  very  difficult  prob¬ 
lems  to  be  solved  and  we  should  sympathize  with  the  people  in  their  effort 
to  establish  a  plan  of  human  liberty.  We  should  not  harass  or  suspect  them. 
We  are  dealing  with  a  problem,  not  merely  of  Mexico,  but  of  all  Latin 
America.  We  are  face  to  face  with  a  great  racial  bloc  and  a  great  racial 
culture.  It  is  not  the  mere  question  of  a  moment ;  it  is  a  much  more  serious 
business.  It  is  the  question  of  a  policy  toward  Latin  America  and  the  future 
peaceful  relationships  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 


Question:  When  grants  were  made  after  DiaZj  why  were  they  not  made 
in  accordance  with  the  Constitution  of  1857? 

Answer:  Of  course  you  have  to  recognize  the  whole  psychology  of  the 
Diaz  regime,  which  was  to  protect  foreign  capital  in  Mexico.  Concessions 
were  made  in  accordance  with  Diaz’s  ideas  and  not  according  to  the  Con¬ 
stitution.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Diaz  passed  certain  laws  guaranteeing 
subsoil  rights  in  petroleum  to  the  owner  of  the  surface  lands  and  these  laws 
were  never  contested  in  the  supreme  court.  They  are  considered  by  many 
as  legal.  There  was  a  restricted  zone  in  the  time  of  Diaz  and  the  provisions 
were  more  strict  then  than  now  but  they  were  not  enforced. 

Question  :  Is  it  true  that  a  certain  piece  of  ground,  two  and  one-half 
million  acres,  was  sold  by  the  Diaz  government  to  a  favored  investor  at 
two  and  one-half  cents  an  acre? 

Answer:  I  do  not  know  the  particular  history  of  that,  but  I  do  know  that 
much  land  was  sold  very,  very  cheaply. 

Question:  The  Constitution  of  1917,  was  it  favorable  to  labor,  to  organ¬ 
ized  labor  or  all  laborers? 

Answer:  Theoretically  to  all  laborers.  The  laws  which  were  passed  then 
apply  where  there  is  any  organized  labor  and  if  there  is  more  than  one  organi¬ 
zation  in  a  shop,  the  group  containing  the  majority  shall  have  the  right  to 
negotiate  the  contract  and  apply  it  to  all  workers. 

Question  :  A  certain  amount  of  conflict  between  the  Diaz  oil  laws  and 
the  Constitution  of  1857  is  due  to  the  fact,  is  it  not,  that  in  1857  petroleum 
had  not  been  discovered  and  developed? 

Answer:  Yes. 

Question:  Was  there  any  discrimination  between  English  and  American 
oil  companies? 

Answer:  Of  course  the  English  companies  came  into  the  field  a  little  later 
than  the  Americans  and  were  subject  to  a  few  more  restrictions.  The  Amer¬ 
icans  who  came  into  the  field  first  were  granted  their  rights  under  laws  which 
provided  that  companies  developing  new  industries  were  free  of  taxation  for 
a  period  of  about  twenty  years.  Doheny  came  in  under  that  provision. 

Question:  Is  the  British  companies’  willingness  to  accept  the  Govern¬ 
ment’s  new  regulations  due  to  the  difference  in  their  contracts? 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


9 


Answer:  The  British  oil  companies  have  been  much  more  amenable  than 
the  American  oil  companies,  and  indicate  their  readiness  to  obey  the  Mexican 
laws  and  dictates  regardless  of  their  concessions. 


Following  Mr.  Beals,  Roberto  Haberman,  representative  of  the  CROM  (Confed- 
eracion  Regional  Obrera  Mexicana),  spoke  to  the  group  on  the  point  of  view  of 
labor,  as  follows: 

Mr.  herring  ought  to  remember  that  this  is  Mexico  and  not  limit 
me  to  a  definite  time  to  speak.  Nothing  is  done  with  any  regard  for 
time  in  Mexico — and  besides,  this  is  a  holiday.  I  am  reminded  of  a 
Mexican  I  spoke  to  one  day  shortly  after  I  came  here.  We  were  sitting  under 
a  tree  during  a  noon-day  siesta  and  suddenly  I  wondered  what  time  it  was 
and  asked  my  neighbor.  He  pulled  out  his  watch  and  after  staring  at  it  for  a 
long  time  turned  it  to  me  and  said,  “Who  knows?”  So  it  goes  here.  Things 
are  not  done  today,  but  always  tomorrow  (rnanana). 

I  would  like  to  give  you  today  the  point  of  view  of  labor.  I  frankly  admit, 
however,  that  I  am  not  at  all  neutral  in  the  matter.  Mr.  Beals  has  just 
given  you  a  fine  outline  of  the  history  of  Mexico  but  he  did  not  emphasize 
certain  things:  For  example,  that  all  the  Mexican  revolutions  for  127  years, 
since  1800,  were  wars  to  recover  land.  The  indispensable  support  of  the 
Indians  was  gained  in  each  war  by  the  promise  of  restoration  of  lands.  But 
politicians  here  are  the  same  as  they  are  in  the  United  States.  They  make 
promises  that  they  don’t  keep — one  set  making  them  in  Spanish,  the  other  in 
English.  So  the  Indians,  after  each  revolution,  found  the  politicians  stronger 
than  before  and  themselves  worse  off  than  ever. 

In  his  revolution  of  1854,  Juarez  induced  the  Indians  to  fight  for  their 
land  against  the  Catholic  Church.  A  people  100  per  cent  Catholic  (for  no 
other  religion  was  permitted  in  Mexico  until  1857)  went  to  fight  against  the 
Church,  not  against  religion  but  against  the  Hierarchy  which  then  owned  two- 
thirds  of  the  land  in  Mexico.  The  Indian  wanted  his  lands  back  and  didn’t 
care  who  had  them.  During  all  these  revolts  you  have  this  land  ques¬ 
tion.  I  don’t  know  whether  anybody  is  going  to  talk  to  you  about  the 
Church  in  relation  to  this  question,  so  I  think  it  necessary  to  explain  to  you 
how  the  Church  obtained  some  of  these  lands.  It  obtained  some  of  them  by 
grants,  some  by  taking  advantage  of  dying  people — priests  have  managed  to 
persuade  many  dying  people  to  leave  their  lands  to  the  Church ;  and  this  is 
why  the  Mexican  Constitution  forbids  inheritance  of  lands  by  priests  except 
from  immediate  relatives.  Another  way  in  which  they  acquired  these  lands 
was  through  the  young  girls  who  became  brides  of  Jesus — the  nuns;  and  just 
as  brides  of  millionaires  bring  dowries,  these  girls  brought  dowries  to  Jesus 
but  gave  them  to  his  delegates.  For  this  reason,  there  are  no  convents  per¬ 
mitted  today.  There  was  no  way  for  these  girls  to  change  their  minds  about 
things  and  get  away,  for  there  was  no  release  from  an  oath — no  matter  what 
oath  it  was,  it  was  binding  forever.  You  know,  of  course,  that  until  the 
Revolution  of  1854  the  Church  enjoyed  many  special  privileges.  The  Church 
had  its  own  police.  The  Inquisition  in  Mexico  lasted  twenty  years  longer 
than  in  any  other  country,  and  the  Church  here  kept  its  police  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  collecting  tithes,  ten  per  cent, — even  to  ten  per  cent  of  the  treasury 
of  the  Mexican  Government.  It  used  its  police  for  enforcing  vows,  for 
other  persuasive  measures  and  money-getting  affairs.  The  Church  owned 


10 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


every  bank  and  every  large  business  in  Mexico,  enforced  mortgages,  and  also 
had  special  privileges  in  the  courts.  No  matter  what  a  priest,  monk  or  nun 
did,  no  power  could  touch  them  save  their  own  courts.  No  matter  what 
went  on  or  who  shouted  blue  murder,  the  civil  police  could  only  come  as 
far  as  the  door  and  listen  in.  But  the  revolution  was  not  waged  against  these 
things:  the  Indians  only  wanted  their  lands  back — and  didn’t  get  them.  The 
lands  that  were  confiscated  from  the  Church  were  distributed  among  politi¬ 
cians.  ,The  lands  that  nobody  wanted  are  still  the  Government’s.  It  was 
not  until  the  time  of  Madero  (in  1910)  that  there  was  any  definite  attempt 
to  redistribute  lands  to  the  people.  His  revolution  was  fought  principally 
on  the  land  question  and  against  it  Diaz’s  fine,  strong  government  tumbled 
like  a  house  of  cards. 

Those  who  succeeded  him  were  forced  also  to  have  a  land  program,  of 
course.  The  Constitution  of  1917  went  so  far  as  to  guarantee  the  return  of 
the  lands  to  the  people. 

To  give  you  an  idea  of  the  conditions  of  labor.  In  1907  under  Diaz, 
there  was  a  strike  in  Orizaba,  a  lovely  village  to  the  south  of  us  devoted  to 
the  textile  industry.  The  workers  objected  to  the  brutal  treatment  of  a 
foreman  and  went  on  strike.  Artillery  was  sent  and  killed  so  many  men, 
women  and  children  that  the  bodies  had  to  be  piled  on  flat-cars  and  taken 
down  to  Vera  Cruz,  four  and  one-half  hours  away,  and  dumped  into  the  sea. 

For  a  truthful  picture  of  the  condition  of  the  industrial  worker  and  the 
peon  in  Mexico  under  the  old  regimes  read  John  Kenneth  Turner’s  Bar¬ 
barous  Mexico.  I,  myself,  have  traveled  quite  extensively  and  I  have  seen 
things  here  that  equalled  all  the  horrors  and  the  brutality  of  the  Congo. 

The  Constitution  prohibited  slavery  in  Mexico  but  the  laws  in  Mexico 
(we  have  always  had  laws)  said  that  as  long  as  a  man  owed  money  to 
another  he  had  to  pay  or  work  it  out,  and  that  if  he  died  the  debt  was  in¬ 
herited  by  his  children,  and  therefore  all  the  masters  had  to  do  was  to  see 
that  their  people  got  into  debt.  Robbed  of  their  lands  and  at  the  mercy  of 
the  company  stores,  the  people  were  kept  in  perpetual  slavery.  And  the 
Church  helped  to  keep  these  people  in  debt  in  many  ways.  In  the  United 
States  you  laugh  when  you  say  that  marriage  means  slavery,  but  in  Mexico 
it  was  slavery  because  every  time  a  poor  Indian  got  married  he  had  to  get 
a  priest  to  say  mass,  had  to  arrange  about  publication  of  banns,  licenses  and 
what  not,  and  all  these  things  cost  money.  I  have  a  servant  whose  brother 
got  married  last  week.  The  simple  services  cost  him  altogether  sixty  pesos, 
including  the  automobile  to  take  the  priest  from  his  place  of  living  to  the 
place  where  the  marriage  took  place.  So  every  time  an  Indian  got  married 
he  had  to  borrow  money  and  so  forge  upon  himself  the  chains  of  peonage. 
He  couldn’t  run  away  because  the  police  would  catch  him  and  return  him  to 
his  owner.  I  have  seen  an  announcement  of  the  sale  of  a  hacienda  in  an  old 
newspaper  and  included  in  the  inventory  of  the  houses  and  live  stock  and 
lands  for  sale  was  a  list  of  so  many  men  and  women  of  various  ages. 

The  peon  used  to  go  to  work  something  like  this:  The  church  bell  would 
ring  at  sunrise,  and  you  know  the  sun  rises  very  early  in  this  part  of  the 
world.  It  would  ring  not  to  call  the  faithful  to  prayer,  but  to  send  them  to 
work.  Then  the  Indians  would  troop  out  with  their  wives  and  children 
and  work  all  day  long  under  the  hot  sun  of  the  tropics  (such  as  I  have  seen 
them  doing  in  Yucatan)  with  nothing  to  eat  but  their  coarse  tortillas  (corn- 
cakes)  and  with  beatings  for  encouragement.  Then  they  would  be  given 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


11 


little  checks  with  5,  10  or  15  marked  on  them,  the  sunset  bell  would  toll 
and  they  would  go  back  to  the  haciendas  where  the  gates  would  again  shut 
on  them.  Six  days  a  week  they  would  do  this,  and  on  the  seventh  day  they 
would  have  to  go  to  the  haciendada’ s  house  to  present  their  checks.  The 
numbers  on  the  checks  indicated  how  many  lashes  they  were  to  receive, 
stripped  bare.  They  would  be  tied  to  a  door  with  two  holes  in  it  for  their 
arms  and  their  arms  bound  on  the  other  side  with  thongs  and  a  stick,  and 
then,  with  their  bleeding  bodies  and  their  broken  spirits  they  had  to  go  to 
church  to  say  mass,  and  when  mass  was  over  they  had  to  work  the  rest  of 
the  day  free  gratis,  for  the  church.  They  had  to  build  a  new  church,  or  to 
do  some  labor  for  the  church. 

Even  their  women  did  not  belong  to  these  peons.  The  history  of  these 
days  is  full  of  records  of  wholesale,  revolting  debauches.  They  used  to  have 
public  performances  during  which  they  would  take  the  men,  beat  them  up 
and  render  them  helpless,  then  take  the  women  and  tie  them  to  bales  of 
hemp,  strip  them  and  take  hot  water  and  inject  it  into  them.  I  was  sent 
down  to  Yucatan  to  gather  material  for  the  museum  about  the  life  of  the 
peons  there  and  for  three  years  I  collected  material,  but  what  I  found  and 
learned  was  so  indecently  revolting  that  I  did  not  want  to  publish  it.  I  did 
not  wish  to  have  preserved  a  record  of  these  things. 

And  throughout  this  period  of  exploitation  (up  to  1910),  both  of  the  in¬ 
dustrial  worker  and  the  peon,  not  once  has  the  voice  of  the  Church  been 
heard  in  the  defense  of  the  Mexican  peon — not  once  in  the  last  hundred 
years.  That  is  why  you  have  the  very  strange  spectacle  you  see.  The  Cath¬ 
olic  is  very  religious,  yet  when  the  priests  went  on  strike  last  August,  two 
million  Catholic  workers  of  the  organization  known  as  the  Mexican  Federa¬ 
tion  of  Labor  appeared  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other  with 
banners  reading: 

Long  live  Christ, 

Long  live  Christ,  the  Carpenter  of  Nazareth,  the  hope  of  the  Worker. 

Down  with  the  Pope,  he  does  not  govern  Mexico. 

In  Yucatan,  after  the  revolution,  one  of  the  first  acts  of  the  Indians  was 
to  destroy  the  bells  which  had  called  them  to  work ;  they  went  into  the 
churches  and  squared  up  accounts.  If  a  saint  was  made  of  wood,  they  burned 
it ;  if  of  paint,  they  scraped  it  off  the  wall ;  if  of  stone,  they  broke  it.  Then 
these  very  Indians  that  smashed  their  saints  went  home  and  lighted  candles 
to  them — these  very  saints  that  had  made  them  work  for  nothing. 

Prior  to  1915  we  had  a  few  labor  organizers  come  here.  The  first  three 
were  anarchists,  then  followed  two  from  Barcelona  and  one  from  Italy,  and 
I  still  have  a  book  brought  into  the  country  giving  sixty  formulas  for  revolu¬ 
tion  and  including  an  invocation  to  the  Saint  of  Dynamite.  It  told  the  work¬ 
ers  that  they  had  some  rights  and  that  by  organizing  they  could  get  some¬ 
where  and  naturally  these  organizing  doctrines  spread  like  wildfire,  although 
the  majority  could  neither  read  nor  write. 

In  1915,  the  first  preliminary  labor  conference  was  called  in  Vera  Cruz  by 
Carranza,  not  for  the  benefit  of  the  workers  but  because  Carranza  was  being 
opposed  by  Villa  and  Zapata,  who  wanted  to  be  president.  Carranza  was 
clever  enough  to  realize  that  he  could  utilize  the  workers  in  battalions  if  he 
could  gain  their  support. 

In  1917,  the  remarkable  Article  123  of  the  Constitution  was  written — 
probably  the  most  romantic  document  ever  drawn  up  to  benefit  the  prole- 


32 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


tariat  of  any  country.  This  constitution,  written  one  year  before  the  Russian 
revolution  has  in  it  provisions  for  the  workers  and  the  women  that  the  Rus¬ 
sians  have  not,  even  in  their  country. 

But  all  these  things  were  done  to  save  Carranza.  A  little  later,  however, 
a  general  strike  was  called,  a  manifesto  was  issued  by  the  Government  to  the 
effect  that  belonging  to  a  labor  union  was  a  treasonable  offense  and  cavalry 
went  up  and  down  the  streets  with  drawn  swords.  You  see,  the  workers, 
fired  with  anarchistic  notions,  did  not  believe  in  political  action  but  in  direct 
action,  and  what  more  direct  action  is  there  than  war?  But  in  1919,  the 
Mexican  Labor  movement  formed  another  organization.  The  Mexican  Labor 
Party  of  Workers  and  Peasants,  which  dealt  with  nothing  but  politics.  The 
Mexican  Federation  of  Labor  with  its  two  million  workers  is  very  uncom¬ 
promising  and  as  an  organization  does  not  deal  in  politics.  You  will 
hear  from  other  speakers  more  particularly  about  the  present  activities  and 
achievements  of  this  party,  but  what  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  now  is 
the  attitude  of  the  Labor  movement  in  supporting  the  present  government  as 
against  the  Church.  The  Catholic  Church,  the  Hierarchy,  a  few  years  ago 
issued  an  edict  saying  that  God  made  man  free,  and  that,  therefore,  when  he 
joined  the  Labor  Party  he  gave  up  his  God-given  freedom  and  as  such  could 
not  be  a  good  Catholic  and  entitled  to  Catholic  benefits — in  other  words,  he 
was  excommunicated.  But  in  1921,  the  Church  changed  its  stand,  since  it 
found  that  the  workers  were  allowing  themselves  to  be  excommunicated  too 
readily,  and  decided  to  bring  some  of  these  peons  back  into  the  fold.  So  it 
called  a  convention  in  Guadalupe  and  decided  that  members  of  the  Labor 
Party  had  not  given  up  their  God-given  freedom  but  that  any  one  receiving 
land  from  the  Government  under  the  new  ex-propriation  plan,  was  receiving 
stolen  goods  and  as  such  were  under  ecclesiastical  ban.  But  the  Indians  cared 
more  for  their  land  than  they  did  for  holy  water. 

Fortunately  at  this  point,  the  C.  R.  O.  M.,  the  Mexican  Federation  of 
Labor,  got  hold  of  Mexico’s  great  artist,  Diego  Rivera,  who  drew  a  picture 
of  Jesus  in  Heaven — the  first  smiling  Jesus  that  was  ever  seen  in  Mexico, 
by  the  way — blessing  an  Indian  who  was  working  his  lands.  Beside  the 
Indian  was  his  wife,  with  a  baby  in  her  arms,  and  strapped  on  the  Indian’s 
back  was  a  rifle.  This  picture  was  distributed  all  over  the  country.  Many 
of  the  Indians  took  down  the  pictures  of  their  saints  and  lit  candles  before 
this  smiling  Jesus. 

The  Church  has  been  fighting  the  battle  of  the  landlords  throughout  these 
many  years  and  especially  recently.  The  leading  political  opponent,  when 
Calles  was  elected,  was  one  Flores,  whose  executive  committee  was  made  up 
of  the  landlords  and  representatives  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

But  the  Government  is  now  well  launched  on  its  program  of  land  restora¬ 
tion,  and  the  big  fight  is  now  on  because  whenever  land  is  taken  for  the 
Indians  it  must  be  taken  away  from  the  big  estates.  These  lands  are  being 
paid  for  by  bonds.  But  this  is  the  main  thing  you  must  remember — especially 
when  you  talk  to  landlords — that  the  landlord  cannot  endure  now  to  see 
his  peons  work  the  land ;  he  is  too  accustomed  to  thinking  that  what  needs 
to  be  worked  is  the  peon.  If  you  go  to  any  hacienda,  the  ranch,  the  smallest 
social  unit  in  Mexico,  you  will  see  a  large  walled  enclosure  in  the  center  of 
which  is  one  huge  gate — the  gate  that  used  to  open  at  sunrise  and  close  to  at 
sunset.  Inside  the  wall  you  will  see  on  one  side  a  row  of  mud  huts  such  as 
a  self-respecting  pig  in  the  United  States  would  refuse  to  live  in,  then  on  the 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


13 


other  side  a  beautiful  big  house  for  the  haciendado,  then  the  company  store 
and  an  enormous  church,  but  you  will  never  find  a  single  school  or  any 
building  of  this  nature.  There  was  not  a  single  rural  school  in  Mexico  prior 
to  1910,  no  orphanages,  none  of  the  things  upon  which  the  Catholic  Church 
in  America  prides  itself. 

If  you  look  at  any  Mexican  village  you  will  see  one  or  two  more  fine 
churches  that  would  be  a  credit  to  any  big  city,  surrounded  by  lots  of  mud 
huts.  In  some  of  the  villages  of  two  thousand  or  less  inhabitants  you  will 
find  as  high  as  twenty  of  these  big  churches  but  not  a  trace  of  a  school  or  a 
hospital.  There  is  a  town  here,  Cholula,  where  there  are  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  enormous  churches,  one  for  every  day  in  the  year.  (I  often  wonder 
what  they  do  in  leap  year!)  There  were  schools,  yes,  but  schools  to  train 
priests,  and  often  tbe  poor  Indian  born  into  a  life  of  peonage  found  that  his 
only  way  of  escape  was  to  turn  priest.  There  was  a  similar  incentive  for  the 
women  to  enter  the  convents. 

Here  in  Mexico  today  you  have  the  high  privilege  of  seeing  a  miracle  take 
place, — a  miracle  similar  to  that  of  the  phoenix  rising  from  the  ashes.  The 
miracle  that  you  may  see  here  is  the  miracle  of  the  beast  of  burden,  the 
Indian,  emerging  not  from  ashes  but  literally  from  the  mud.  Ninety  per  cent 
of  the  people  are  born,  live  and  die  in  mud,  and  when  you  go  around  and 
visit  these  places  look  and  see  these  things  for  yourselves.  Don’t  take  my 
word  for  them;  I  am  frankly  a  propagandist.  See  with  your  own  eyes.  See 
how  this  beast  of  burden  is  beginning  to  stand  up  and  look  you  straight  in 
the  eye  when  he  talks  to  you. 

It  is  a  pity,  however,  that  you  could  not  have  been  here  to  see  what  this 
new  found  man  did  when  the  first  shackles  of  restraint  fell  from  him.  This 
eminently  Catholic  individual  chopped  off  the  heads  of  his  saints.  He  was 
not  fed  with  anti-religious  dogma  but  he  knew  such  things  as  this  that  Felipe 
Carrillo  once  told  a  gathering  of  Indians  in  Yucatan.  They  used  to  regard 
him,  you  know,  as  a  sort  of  saint.  When  he  came  to  a  town  to  speak  they 
would  gather  around  and  come  close  to  touch  him.  It  was  hard  for  them  to 
believe  that  he  was  real.  At  the  close  of  a  long  and  passionate  address  to 
them  (shortly  before  he  was  assassinated),  he  told  them  this: 

“In  the  name  of  God,  the  God  of  Love,  you  had  to  work  from  sunrise  to 
sunset.  In  the  name  of  Jesus,  Jesus,  the  Son  of  God,  you  were  being  beaten 
instead  of  being  paid.  In  the  name  of  Mary,  Mary  the  Virgin,  your  daugh¬ 
ters  were  being  raped,  your  wives  bartered  by  the  haciendado.  In  the  name 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  you  were  kept  crushed  to  the  earth! 

“In  the  name  of  the  Devil  you  were  freed!” 

He  paused.  There  came  a  tumultuous  roar,  ”Viva  le  Diable!”  (Long 
live  the  Devil.) 


14 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Social  Groups  and  Leading  Personalities 

By  Carleton  Beals 

I  want,  in  starting  out,  to  use  a  few  generalizations.  I  shall  outline 
the  general  political  forces  in  a  rough  way  and  give  you  the  practical 
organizations  that  correspond  to  some  of  these  forces. 

I  would  take  as  my  first  heading,  factors  of  social  control : 

(a)  Major  and  Direct  factors: 

( 1 )  The  Army — the  most  direct  and  most  important  factor  of  social  con¬ 
trol  in  Mexico  even  today.  The  army  is  a  hydra-headed  creature  and  not 
addicted  to  too  much  loyalty. 

(2)  Labor — which  is  emerging  as  a  more  democratic  factor.  Labor  is 
divided  into  industrial  labor  and  peasant  labor  and  both  the  industrial  groups 
and  the  peasant  groups  are  further  divided  into  political  groups  and  purely 
syndicalist  groups. 

(3)  The  Bureaucracy — which  has  a  larger  and  more  direct  influence  on 
the  governmental  control,  perhaps,  than  any  other  factor.  It  has  many  of 
the  defects  of  the  army;  it  is  not  imbued  with  too  much  loyalty.  It  is  com¬ 
posed  of  two  classes  of  professional  bureaucrats — the  bureaucrat  who  more 
or  less  stands  in  with  every  regime,  and  the  bureaucrat  who  has  come  up  with 
the  revolution.  The  system  has  its  roots  back  in  the  local  casique  organiza¬ 
tion  of  the  Aztec  civilization.  Casique  is  an  Aztec  word  applied  to  a  sort  of 
political  henchman,  and  the  word  and  the  system  have  come  down  to  the 
present  day.  A  casique  is  a  local  boss  who  may  have  many  good  character¬ 
istics;  he  may  have  come  up  with  the  revolution  and  be  quite  honest  and 
idealistic;  and  on  the  other  hand  he  may  be  worse  than  the  finest  examples 
of  Tammany  Hall  bosses.  These  casiques  usually  ally  themselves  with 
their  groups,  for  instance,  with  labor  or  the  representative  of  the  local 
agrarian  commission  or  the  local  military  commander,  or  even  with  the 
church  or  the  foreign  capital  or  business  men  in  the  vicinity. 

My  second  heading  under  factors  of  social  control  would  be : 

(b)  Indirect — and  under  that  I  would  put  the: 

( 1 )  Indianism,  or  the  Indian  race  groups.  These  have  no  direct  political 
expression  as  such  but  they  have  a  very  definite  effect  on  certain  groupings 
and  ultimately  this  underlying  element  brings  to  bear  certain  modifications 
and  influences  in  political  forms.  The  Indian  element  of  the  country,  of 
course,  is  imbued  with  that  religious  psychology  which  you  will  find  in  China 
and  Russia.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  that  inward  looking  psychology  which 
does  not  readily  translate  itself  into  outward  actions.  The  Indian  is  ever 
present — he  is  a  part  of  everything  and  is  everywhere. 

Among  the  other  indirect  factors  I  would  mention  three  largely  antago¬ 
nistic  to  the  present  regime — the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  the  landholding 
class,  and  the  old  Creole  aristocracy. 

The  third  factor  of  social  control  is,  of  course,  foreign  capital. 

I  might  have  mentioned  among  the  indirect  factors,  climate  and  geography. 
Different  geographical  and  climatic  stimuli  need  different  political  outcomes. 
Yucatan,  for  instance,  which  has  quite  a  country,  climate  and  civilization  of 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


15 


its  own,  has  frequently  felt  that  it  should  have  an  independent  existence  and 
has  wanted  to  secede  from  the  union  of  the  United  States  of  Mexico. 

You  also  have  certain  other  factors  which  are  not  directly  concerned  with 
human  organization,  only  indirectly,  and  among  these,  of  course,  are  the 
economic  zones;  these  are  petroleum  in  the  district  of  Tamaulipas,  mining  in 
Durango,  Sonora,  Hidalgo,  Zacatecos;  the  Henequen  zone,  a  large  economic 
zone  in  Yucatan,  developed  toward  the  end  of  the  Diaz  regime;  the  Maguey 
regions,  developed  by  the  Cientifico  group;  one  of  those  so-called  pulque 
trusts  which  present  the  government  with  important  taxes  yearly;  and  the 
lowlands  region  with  sugar,  rubber,  coffee,  etc. 

In  considering  labor  and  its  organizations,  the  first  group  is  the  Confedera¬ 
tion  Regional  Obrera  Mexicana.  It  was  organized  in  Zacateca  in  1919  at 
the  fourth  national  labor  congress  held  in  Mexico.  The  CROM  is  at  pres¬ 
ent  affiliated  with  the  Pan  American  Federation  of  Labor.  The  CROM 
gives  as  its  affiliated  membership  2,000,000  but  actual  membership  in  the 
CROM  is  500,000.  Its  members  are  mostly  in  the  district  of  the  textile 
mills  in  Orizaba,  in  the  Federal  District,  in  Vera  Cruz,  and  among  the  peas¬ 
ants  in  the  State  of  Mexico,  Durango  and  in  Zacateca. 

The  second  organization  I  would  mention  is  the  Railroad  Confederation 
known  as  the  C.  S.  F.  It  has  between  50,000  and  60,000  members  drawn 
from  the  transport  and  communications  workers.  Incidentally  this  group 
is  at  present  on  strike. 

The  third  group,  the  General  Confederation  of  Labor,  known  as  the 
C.  G.  T.  which  has  possibly  30,000  members,  mostly  bread  makers  in  the 
capital  district,  textile  workers  and  workers  in  the  oil  fields  in  Tampico.  It 
was  organized  in  September,  1921,  in  Mexico  City,  and  is  syndicalistic  in  its 
aims.  It  was  sponsored  by  the  International  which  has  its  headquarters  in 
Barcelona. 

The  fourth  division  is  the  National  Catholic  Federation  of  Labor,  the 
C.  N.  C.  P.  It  has  353  unions,  was  organized  in  Guadalajara  in  1921  at  a 
congress  of  1,374  delegates,  and  has  now  22,000  members.  It  is  affiliated 
with  the  International  Confederation  of  Christian  Syndicates  and  the  National 
Catholic  Confederation  of  Labor  of  Spain. 

Coming  to  the  Peasant  organizations  there  are: 

First,  the  National  Agrarian  Party  led  by  Soto  y  Gama,  organized  in  1920 
for  protection  of  the  peons.  It  had  much  power  directly  after  its  organiza¬ 
tion  although  it  has  been  rapidly  going  to  pieces  in  the  last  year  or  so. 

Second,  the  National  Peasant  League,  the  L.  N.  C.,  held  its  first  conven¬ 
tion  in  Cuatla  in  1923  and  its  second  in  Mexico  City  in  1926.  Its  congress 
represented  seventeen  states  and  300,000  members.  It  is  strongest  in  Vera 
Cruz,  Puebla,  Morelos,  Michoacan,  and  Jalisco. 

The  distinctly  political  parties  are: 

(a)  The  Partido  Laborista,  founded  in  Zacateca  in  1920,  by  labor  dele¬ 
gates  elected  by  a  labor  bloc  much  larger  than  the  Labor  Party  itself.  It  has 
eight  members  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  and  one  in  the  Senate. 

(b)  There  was  formed  in  the  spring  of  1926  the  Alliance  of  Socialist  Par¬ 
ties  of  the  Republic.  This  is  one  of  those  typically  bureaucratic  parties:  the 
name  “Socialist”  here  lacks  all  meaning.  It  was  formed  in  the  shadow  of  the 
executive  power  all  through  the  revolutionary  period.  The  first  of  these  par¬ 
ties  which  was  formed  was  the  Liberal  Party  of  the  time  of  Madero.  It  was 


16 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


ousted  by  the  Huerta  revolution  but  sometime  later  became  the  Constitutional 
Liberal  Party.  Under  Obregon  it  was  organized  as  the  Co-operatist  Party 
but  later  split  in  two,  one  half  supporting  de  la  Huerta  and  the  other  half 
Calles.  At  present  it  operates  as  a  Socialist  Party  bloc.  It  controls  the 
Chamber  and  indirectly  controls  the  Senate.  It  blocked  the  formation  of  a 
majority  in  the  Senate  until  it  could  get  enough  senators  to  agree  to  back  its 
particular  program. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  Communist  Party  that  doesn’t  amount  to  a  great 
deal.  It  has  some  influence  in  Puebla,  Vera  Cruz  and  Michoacan. 

There  are  certain  state  line-ups  which  are  worth  noting  to  give  you  an  idea 
of  the  political  complexion  of  Mexico: 

There  are  Agrarian  governors  in  the  states  of  Puebla  and  Hidalgo  and 
other  states ;  the  Labor  Party  is  in  the  saddle  in  San  Luis  Potosi ;  and  the 
Political  Agrarians  are  centered  around  De  Negri  in  the  State  of  Tamaulipais. 

Among  the  organizations  which  should  be  also  mentioned  is  the  Syndicate 
Nacional  de  Agricultures,  the  land-owners’  association. 

There  is,  in  addition  to  this  line-up,  a  certain  amount  of  sectionalism  which 
should  be  mentioned.  I  have  spoken  of  the  sectionalism  of  Yucatan.  This 
was  made  concrete  and  coherent  by  the  Socialist  Party  of  the  southeast,  a 
party  based  on  the  Maya  race  bloc  and  springing  from  the  League  Filipe 
Carrillo.  It  has  since  deteriorated  in  ideals  but  does  represent  closely  a 
grouping  around  a  certain  race  bloc  or  geographical  entity.  Sonora  is  another 
center  of  sectionalism  and  is  interesting  because  it  has  attracted  the  bulk  of 
the  bureaucrats  in  recent  times  and  it  is  rather  interesting  to  note  here,  in 
passing,  the  shift  of  political  control  in  Mexico  from  the  south  to  the  north. 
Before  the  time  of  Diaz  the  political  control  was  largely  centered  in  the 
south  of  Mexico.  The  presidential  state  at  that  time  was  Oaxaca,  where 
both  Juarez  and  Diaz  were  born.  Since  the  downfall  of  Diaz,  from  1910, 
the  political  control  has  definitely  shifted  to  the  north.  This  is  explicable  in 
several  ways  but  principally  because  of  the  growth  in  recent  years  of  railroad 
lines  in  the  north  of  Mexico.  There  are  better  means  of  communication  in 
the  north  and  arms  can  be  shipped  across  the  border  from  the  United  States 
more  quickly  to  the  northern  centers.  The  leaders  of  the  present  regime  are 
largely  from  the  State  of  Sonora.  Calles  is  from  Sonora,  many  of  the  minis¬ 
ters  are  from  there,  and  in  practically  every  ministry  if  you  do  not  find  the 
head  of  the  department  from  Sonora  you  will  find  the  sub-secretary  or  some¬ 
body  from  that  state.  There  is  a  certain  sectionalism  due  to  the  petroleum 
industry  in  Tamaulipais.  For  instance,  in  Panuca,  a  great  oil  section,  not  a 
single  Indian  village  has  received  common  lands.  The  reason  is  probably 
quite  clear.  There  are  other  factors  of  sectionalism — Guadalajara  and  Puebla 
which  are  particularly  strong  church  centers.  The  little  state  of  Tlaxcala 
has  a  certain  independent  status  all  its  own. 

*  *  * 

I  have  been  asked  to  touch  briefly  on  the  personalities  of  the  leaders  of  the 
various  political  parties. 

Let  us  take  Obregon  first.  Born  in  Sonora,  he  came  up  particularly  dur¬ 
ing  the  Carranza  regime.  At  the  time  of  the  Carranza  drive  against  Huerta 
there  were  three  generals  in  the  north — Pablo  Gonzales  and  Pancho  Villa 
directly  north  and  Obregon  in  the  northwest.  Incidentally  Obregon  had  the 
longest  march  to  make  down  through  Sonora,  Sinaloa,  across  very  difficult 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


17 


terrain,  down  through  Jalisco  to  the  capital,  but  he  arrived  at  the  capital  be¬ 
fore  either  of  the  two  other  generals  and  was  of  invaluable  assistance  in  put¬ 
ting  Carranza  in  power.  Obregon  became,  under  Carranza,  Minister  of 
War,  and  it  was  to  Obregon’s  credit  that  in  a  very  short  while  he  brought 
the  army  under  strict  discipline.  Just  prior  to  Obregon  militarism  had  run 
mad,  the  officers,  even  the  generals,  lacked  discipline.  As  a  strategist  he  was 
astute  and  original.  He  has  written  a  book  called  8j000  Kilometers  of  Cam¬ 
paign  which  is  very  interesting.  Carranza  came  into  power  after  a  period  of 
grave  disorder.  Obregon  came  in  with  little  more  settled  conditions  and 
achieved  a  pacific  administration,  but  he  too  was  confused  with  the  problem 
of  satisfying  too  many  conflicting  interests  and  necessities. 

He  was  succeeded  by  President  Calles,  also  born  in  Sonora,  of  a  very  poor 
family  supposed  to  be  of  Syrian  and  Yucatan  origin.  He  went  through 
normal  school  and  it  is  said  that  he  bought  his  first  pair  of  shoes  when  he 
went  to  take  his  diploma.  He  became  a  labor  organizer  and  engaged  in  a 
number  of  various  activities  and  then  finally  went  into  business.  At  the  time 
of  the  Huerta  coup  he  became  military  governor  of  Sonora  and  when  Obre¬ 
gon  marched  on  the  capital  he  assisted  him.  Under  Obregon  he  was  first 
Minister  of  War  and  then  Minister  of  the  Interior  or  Gobernaclon. 

Luis  N.  Morones  has  come  up  with  the  C.R.O.M.,  which  was  organized 
in  1919.  An  electrician  by  trade  he  became  one  of  the  first  secretaries  of  the 
Federation  of  Labor.  Under  Obregon  he  was  head  of  the  munitions  work¬ 
ers  in  Mexico  City  with  a  budget  of  about  thirty  millions  and  under  Calles 
he  is  secretary  of  the  Department  of  Commerce,  Labor  and  Industry.  He  is 
a  strong  man,  probably  one  of  the  strongest  in  the  Government. 

Soto  y  Gama,  whom  I  first  met  when  he  came  back  from  the  congress  at 
Zacateca,  is  a  lawyer  in  Mexico  City.  Soto  y  Gama  formed  the  National 
Agrarian  Party  and  has  been  more  or  less  from  that  time  a  member  of  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies.  He  is  at  present  a  suplente,  or  substitute  deputy. 

Manuel  Gamio  is  the  one  man  of  scientific  interests  who  has  concerned 
himself  with  the  Indian  problem  in  Mexico.  He  is  now  making  a  survey  of 
the  Mexicans  in  the  United  States. 

Pani,  the  Minister  of  Finance,  is  probably  the  most  talked  of  man  in  the 
Cabinet  and  the  most  astute  and  clever.  He  has  been  able  to  maintain  a 
Cabinet  position  longer  than  any  other  man  in  Mexico. 

*  *  * 

Question  :  Supposing  the  Government  were  to  changej  how  much  would 
be  changed  of  the  present  educational  program? 

Answer:  Education  has  been  given,  in  Mexico,  an  entirely  different  and 
new  orientation  and  direction.  I  doubt  if  a  reactionary  regime  could  mate¬ 
rially  change  things.  You  have  absolutely  established  in  Mexico,  as  a  result 
of  this,  a  state  of  affairs  where  a  belief  and  faith  has  been  created  in  popular 
and  rural  education  which  no  regime  could  ignore. 

Question:  Are  the  bureaucrats  anything  like  our  civil  service  employes? 

Answer:  More  or  less,  but  appointments  are  made  on  the  spoils  system. 

Question:  fVhat  is  the  numerical  strength  of  labor  organizations  in 
Mexico  and  what  percentage  is  in  agreement  with  the  present  Government? 

Answer:  The  total  strength  is  about  one  and  a  half  millions.  The 
C.R.O.M.,  the  largest  single  organization,  is  entirely  in  accord  with  the  pres- 


18 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


ent  regime.  The  others  go  along  with  the  Government,  although  the  rail¬ 
road  people  seem  more  loyal  to  Obregon  than  to  Calles, 

Question  :  Define  the  right  of  suffrage  in  Mexico. 

Answer:  For  the  first  time  in  Mexican  history  there  is  beginning  to  be 
some  form  of  popular  organization  apart  from  the  local  village  organizations 
which  have  more  or  less  served  down  through  the  centuries.  But  don’t  think 
of  Mexico  in  current  American  political  terms  or  think  that  democracy  con¬ 
sists  in  dropping  a  ballot  in  a  ballot  box.  A  government  is  a  result  of  social 
and  economic  forces;  the  ballot  is  merely  a  minor  expression.  Most  elections 
in  Mexico  are  not  elections  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  You  cannot  have 
an  election  cut  to  the  American  pattern  in  a  country  where  you  have  seventy- 
five  per  cent  or  more  of  the  people  illiterate.  You  cannot  have  an  election  cut 
to  democratic  American  fashion  where  the  army  plays  the  role  that  it  does  in 
Mexico.  But  the  Constitution  gives  the  right  of  suffrage  to  all  Mexican 
people  over  eighteen  years  of  age  who  have  families ;  if  no  family,  then  over 
twenty-one  years  of  age.  The  Constitution  does  not  deny  the  right  of  suf¬ 
frage  to  women. 

Question  :  Is  there  any  definite  active  Soviet  party  or  movement  in  the 
country? 

Answer:  In  the  sense  of  having  originated  in  Russia  and  standing  for  the 
political  principles  which  are  now  working  out  in  Russia,  I  should  say  that 
there  is  no  such  group  of  any  importance  and  certainly  no  such  group  with 
any  power. 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


19 


THE  OIL  SITUATION  IN  MEXICO 

Statement  by  Walter  Frank 
A  Lawyer  and  Member  of  The  Seminar 

I  SHALL  attempt  to  give  you  the  Mexican  point  of  view  of  the  oil  situa¬ 
tion  from  its  legal  aspect.  No  intensive  study,  of  course,  was  possible  in 
our  limited  time.  I  have,  however,  spent  about  three  half-days  with 
Senor  Carillo,  in  addition  to  the  conferences  with  him  and  with  Senor  Moro- 
nes  which  we  all  attended.  I  think  I  have  gotten  their  slant,  and  how  it 
differs  from  that  of  the  Americans,  and  this  I  shall  try  to  interpret  to,  you. 

I  am  going  to  refer  briefly  to  some  of  the  technical  points  raised  by  Mr. 
Carrillo  and  which  he  did  not  stress  when  we  were  with  him  and  then  I 
am  going  to  take  up  the  general  argument,  which  he  did  stress,  and  which  is 
a  very  important  one. 

The  technical  side  is  this :  The  sub-soil  rights  were  generally  conferred  to 
owners  of  the  surface  under  three  statutes,  1884,  1892  and  1909.  First,  the 
question  is  raised  as  to  the  bindingness  of  these  statutes,  they  being  considered 
secondary  laws  and  not  over-riding  the  primary  laws,  the  fundamental  laws 
of  the  country.  The  Mexican  procedure  is  as  follows :  A  constitution  is 
adopted  by  a  constitutional  congress — this  is  a  comparatively  short  instrument, 
the  idea  being  that  the  provisions  of  the  constitution  shall  be  elaborated 
through  fundamental  laws  later.  These  fundamental  laws  are  supposed  to 
be  passed  by  Congress  (the  Senate  and  Deputies),  after  which  they  become 
binding.  This,  of  course,  differs  from  our  own  constitutional  procedure. 
Secondary  laws  are  passed  by  the  deputies  and  the  claim  is  made,  although  not 
pushed  very  hard,  that  these  three  statutes  are  secondary  and  cannot  over¬ 
ride  the  fundamental  laws  which  contain  certain  prohibitions  which  are  not 
complied  with  in  the  actual  concessions  which  were  made.  In  the  actual  mak¬ 
ing  of  these  concessions,  the  Diaz  government  just  disregarded  the  laws  and 
took  what  they  could.  This  is  the  general  attitude. 

Apart  from  that,  the  fundamental  law  provides  that  foreigners  could  not 
get  an  interest  in  real  property  within  certain  strips  adjoining  either  the  sea 
or  the  borders.  That  was  a  part  of  the  fundamental  law  which  elaborated 
the  Constitution,  the  Constitution  having  a  provision  stating  that  Congress 
should  adopt  a  fundamental  law  regulating  and  making  definite  this  matter. 

The  secondary  laws  which  granted  these  sub-soil  rights  disregarded  this 
prohibitive  strip  since  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  oil  lands  are  within  those 
prohibitive  zones.  That  also  is  not  stressed  tremendously,  partly,  I  believe, 
because  the  Mexican  Government  is  ready  to  disregard  all  regulations  of 
this  sort  in  their  final  adjustments. 

The  large  point  of  view  is  the  difference  in  attitude  toward  rights  in  real 
property  between  the  Anglo-Saxon  people  and  the  Spanish. 

The  Anglo-Saxons  have  an  attitude  toward  property  which  is  quite  abso¬ 
lute.  Property  once  acquired  belongs  to  the  owner,  to  do  with  as  he  pleases. 
It  cannot  be  taken  away  from  him  without  full  payment  in  cash.  His  use 
of  the  property  cannot  be  limited.  This  is  Carrillo’s  idea  of  the  American 
attitude  toward  property.  I  will  comment  on  this  concept  later,  but  gener¬ 
ally  speaking,  he  is  right.  When  our  colonists  settled  and  laid  out  land,  the 


20 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


land  belonged  to  them  and  there  was  no  if,  and,  or  but  about  it.  In  some 
instances  they  got  the  land  by  just  taking  it,  in  some  by  royal  grants,  but  the 
property  in  each  case  belonged  to  the  owner — and  that  was  that !  Now,  the 
Spanish  idea  of  real  estate  is  entirely  different,  starting  from  the  old  Spanish 
law  that  the  fundamental  title  to  the  property  lies  in  the  Crown.  The  Crown 
may  grant  rights  to  the  individual,  sometimes  for  general  purposes,  but  as  a 
rule  for  specific  purposes  as  for  agriculture,  for  building  or  for  individual  use. 
But  a  complete  right,  as  the  Anglo-Saxon  law  would  put  it  “from  Heaven  to 
Hell,”  does  not  exist  under  the  Spanish  law.  This  was  the  old  Spanish  law 
which  was  embodied  in  the  law  of  1793.  Then  came  the  Mexican  Revolu¬ 
tion  of  1810-21  and  the  Treaty  of  Cordova  in  which  the  independence  of 
Mexico  was  recognized,  and  which  provided  that  the  Spanish  law  should  con¬ 
tinue  in  Mexico  as  it  existed  at  the  time,  until  later  modified.  The  same 
procedure  prevailed  in  the  United  States.  Our  laws  in  the  State  of  New 
York  were  based  on  English  law  until  that  law  was  modified.  A  man  suing 
on  a  note  in  1810  would  base  his  rights  on  statutes  of  Great  Britain  still  in 
force.  Therefore  you  had  in  Mexico  a  continuation  of  the  land  laws  of 
Spain.  The  Constitution  of  1857  did  not  alter  them  in  any  way.  There 
was  no  change  in  the  land  laws  of  Mexico  until  this  first  statute  of  1884  in 
which  sub-soil  rights  were  granted.  It  is  claimed  by  the  Mexican  Govern¬ 
ment  that  whatever  rights  were  granted  under  these  statutes  were  subject  to 
the  underlying  principle  of  this  law  that  all  property  rights  may  at  any  time 
be  modified  by  reasonable  statutes  of  general  application.  That  idea  will 
be  a  little  more  clarified  after  I  get  through  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  point  of 
view. 

This  general  right  to  change  the  laws  applied  not  only  to  the  sub-soil 
rights  but  applied  to  all  other  property  or  general  rights.  In  other  words,  they 
claimed  to  have  the  right  to  modify  the  attending  laws.  They  do  not  seem 
to  claim,  however,  the  right  to  take  away  absolutely  any  of  these  grants 
which  may  have  been  made,  but  that  by  a  general  statute  covering  all  persons 
they  can  modify  the  ownership  of  any  such  property.  It  is  for  that  reason 
that  they  claim  that  they  are  not  taking  away  sub-soil  rights  to  oil  in  the 
ground  by  the  present  regulations  but  that  they  are  modifying  the  method 
of  holding  such  rights  and  what  may  be  done  under  them.  They  say  that 
under  the  law  we  have  granted  sub-soil  rights  to  the  owners  of  the  soil. 
We  are  not  going  to  take  away  such  rights,  that  would  be  illegal,  but  we 
can  modify  the  method  of  holding  these  rights  provided  we  substantially  do 
justice. 

Now  let  me  take  the  American  attitude  toward  this  difficulty.  The  normal 
American,  believing  that  he  has  the  ownership  of  the  soil  and  then  having 
been  granted  the  rights  to  the  sub-soil,  says  to  himself:  “Well  then,  I  have 
the  whole  thing.”  This  is  best  illustrated  by  Professor  Hackett,  who  wrote 
the  pamphlet  The  Mexican  Revolution,  1910-26,  on  page  350  of  which  he 
writes:  Under  the  laws  of  1884-92  and  1909,  owners  of  the  surface  lands 
in  Mexico  until  1917  had  unquestioned  title  to  whatever  sub-soil  deposits 
there  might  be  beneath  the  surface  owned  by  them.” 

The  Mexican  Government  would  deny  that  absolutely.  They  would  say 
that  there  was  created  under  these  statutes  only  certain  rights  to  take  out 
what  was  there.  They  did  not  grant  whatever  was  there,  nor  did  they  grant 
such  rights  for  all  futurity,  but  they  did  grant  the  right  to  take  out!  And 
they  contend  that  that  right  did  not  merge  into  ownership  of  the  soil.  There 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


21 


was  simply  the  vested  right  to  take  out.  (A  fine  difference  but  important.) 
Because  merely  the  right  to  withdraw  was  granted  the  method  of  withdrawal 
might  be  modified  by  them  from  time  to  time  provided  there  was  this 
reserve  power  in  the  State  to  modify  laws  and  so  long  as  they  did  not 
destroy  such  right.  The  Mexican  Government  stated  at  the  outset  of  the 
controversy  that  the  change  in  the  Constitution  of  1917  and  the  fundamental 
law  putting  this  change  into  effect  and  reclaiming  for  the  Government  the 
sub-soil  rights,  should  not  be  retroactive.  In  other  words  it  did  not  say  that 
(although  the  Constitution  says  that  all  subsoil  rights  belong  to  the  Govern¬ 
ment),  the  new  law  was  retroactive  and  that  it  would  negate  the  rights  of 
all  who  had  sub-soil  titles  prior  to  the  first  of  May,  1917.  When  they  came 
to  pass  their  regulations,  however,  they  did  not,  from  the  American  point  of 
view,  carry  that  fully  into  effect ;  because  the  American  claimed  that  he 
owned  normally  the  right  to  withdraw  oil  from  his  particular  piece  of  ground. 
Now,  however,  the  American  feels,  under  the  regulations,  these  rights  are 
limited  in  time,  his  title  is  affected  and  his  property  to  that  extent  is  taken 
away.  To  my  mind,  as  the  United  States  constitution  is  being  interpreted, 
the  American  position  is  quite  correct, — according  to  the  American  point  of 
view  as  to  property  rights.  In  other  words,  no  State  in  the  United  States 
would  be  allowed  to  pass  a  law  putting  into  effect  these  Mexican  regula¬ 
tions.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  would  be  a  bar  to  that.  It 
would  be  considered  a  taking  of  property  without  due  compensation.  The 
Mexican  point  of  view  is  that  as  long  as  they  fairly  and  equitably  take  care 
of  the  interests  of  the  owners  they  may  make  changes  in  the  ownership  and 
that  such  changes,  as  long  as  the  rights  of  the  owners  are  substantially  taken 
care  of,  do  not  take  property  without  due  compensation. 

Now  that  is  the  big  break  between  the  two  points  of  view.  The  feeling 
of  the  Mexican  Government  is  that  it  has  substantially  taken  care  of  the 
rights  of  the  owners  of  the  sub-soil  by  granting  them  the  right  to  take  out  oil 
as  long  as  the  oil  exists — say  for  50  years,  or  for  the  life  of  the  owner — and 
that  under  their  law  this  is  all  that  is  required  of  them.  The  American  point 
of  view  is  that  any  change  or  limitation  is  a  taking  away  of  property  rights 
which  must  be  paid  for  in  cash. 

I  should  like  to  give  you  some  instances  of  how,  even  under  the  American 
form  of  government,  this  absolute  right  to  property  does  not  exist.  These 
instances  will  be  different  from  anything  like  the  Mexican  petroleum  cases: 
they  are  not  given  as  an  argument  that  the  position  of  the  Mexican  Govern¬ 
ment  is  correct,  but  they  will  illustrate  the  point  of  view  of  the  Mexican  who 
does  not  believe  in  the  absolute  ownership  of  the  land. 

Under  our  constitution  property  rights  are  very  strongly  protected  and  of 
course  property  right  means  that  a  man  who  owns  property  may  use  it  as  he 
pleases :  he  can  build  a  house  on  it,  or  refrain  from  building  a  house,  he  can 
build  a  high  house  or  a  low  house,  or  what  he  likes — but  there  is  a  limitation 
imposed  on  him  even  under  our  American  law.  We  start  with  the  absolute 
idea  and  then  find  ourselves  at  the  very  beginning  in  a  position  where  we 
cannot  grant  absolute  right.  For  instance,  we  find  in  cities  we  must  impose 
a  fire  line ;  no  more  wooden  houses  within  certain  limits.  That,  from  an  abso¬ 
lute  point  of  view,  is  a  taking  away  of  property  rights.  “I  own  this  land,  I 
bought  it  at  a  time  when  I  thought  I  could  build  a  frame  house  here,  now 
you  say  I  have  to  build  a  house  of  stone.”  You  have  heard  remarks  like  these. 
Even  though  we  have  a  written  constitution  which  says  that  property  rights 


22 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


shall  not  be  interfered  with,  the  fire  limit  law  is  sustained  and  is  sustained 
under  what  we  call  the  police  power — concerning  which  the  constitution  says 
nothing.  This  police  power  (which  has  nothing  to  do  with  policing)  comes 
from  the  Greek  word  for  City — which  to  them  meant  State.  It  is  a  public 
policy  point  of  view  which  says  that  the  State  may  take  rights,  may  destroy 
property  rights  when  it  is  necessary  to  preserve,  the  health,  life  or  safety  of 
the  people.  In  some,  instances  they  go  so  far  as  to  say,  to  protect  the  public 
welfare.  This  is  one  illustration,  but  I  could  give  you  many  similar.  In 
the  recent  development  of  municipalities,  there  has  grown  up  the  view  that  it 
is  necessary  to  limit  in  many  ways  the  use  of  real  property,  with  the  result 
that  we  now  have  limitations  on  heights  of  buildings,  we  require  “set-backs” 
as  you  go  higher,  we  limit  the  use  of  the  property.  We  say  your  land  shall 
not  be  used  for  factory  purposes,  nor  for  business,  but  restricted  entirely  to 
residences. 

Even  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  that  seems  to  be  taking  away  rights  to 
property  but  cases  taken  to  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  growing  out 
of  such  conflictS'of  opinion  are  there  sustained.  The  courts  recognize  that 
as  the  city  grows  you  must  put  a  limit  on  the  use  and  size  of  buildings. 

Another  illustration  is  the  original  tenement  house  laws.  Old  private 
houses  converted  into  four-  or  five-family  houses  and  without  toilet  and  water 
on  each  floor  are  condemned  by  law.  Trinity  Church  in  New  York  owned 
a  number  of  such  houses.  It  protested  that  the  cost  of  installing  plumbing 
on  each  floor  was  prohibitive,  more  than  the  value  of  the  houses  themselves, 
and  that  in  forcing  them  either  to  install  such  plumbing  or  to  close  up  such 
houses,  their  property  was  being  taken  away  from  them.  They  made  a  test 
case  of  it  and  the  city  authorities  were  sustained  on  the  ground  that  the 
city  government  has  the  right  to  look  after  the  health  of  its  people. 

The  average  Mexican  lawyer  would  say,  “But  I  really  can’t  see  the  dif¬ 
ference  between  your  interference  with  property  and  the  interference  with 
property  we  propose  which  protects  your  ownership  and  your  interests  in  a 
broad  way.”  I  can  see  the  difference,  because  I  am  an  American,  but  the 
classification  is  an  arbitrary  one. 

Let  me  give  you  another  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  we  modify  abso¬ 
lute  rights  to  property.  A  railroad  or  a  gas  company  has  a  franchise.  It  sells 
gas  or  it  sells  service  and  it  has  these  rights.  There  was  nothing  in  their 
original  franchies  limiting  them  in  any  way  as  to  the  prices  they  might  charge. 
But  subsequently  there  were  passed  Public  Service  laws  under  which  the 
power  of  these  companies  has  been  greatly  curbed.  The  public  fixes  the  rates, 
and  if  these  rates  are  sufficient  to  return  a  fair  profit,  they  are  enforced.  This 
is  an  absolute  doing  away  with  the  property  rights  of  the  corporation,  which, 
however,  is  legalized  by  the  fact  that  what  the  corporation  is  doing  is  of  such 
vital  importance  to  the  community  that  the  government  has  the  right  to 
legulate  and  control  its  activities. 

You  must  understand  that  the  extent  to  which  the  government  has  been 
led  to  interfere  with  property  rights  in  the  United  States  was  not  fixed 
in  the  beginning  but  was  subject  to  a  constant  growth.  We  have  found  it 
absolutely  necessary,  from  time  to  time,  to  increase  those  police  powers  of 
which  I  spoke,  so  that  we  have  the  picture  that  at  certain  times  some  things 
are  constitutional  whereas  previously  they  were  held  unconstitutional.  I  can 
see  that  quite  possibly  some  day  our  courts  may  even  go  as  far  as  the  Mexi¬ 
can  Government  has  gone  in  its  present  position,  although  certainly  not  today. 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


23 


Another  example  which  may  help  you  to  get  the  Mexican  point  of  view 
is  this:  In  England  there  is  no  written  constitution.  Any  statute  validly 
passed  by  Parliament  must  be  enforced  by  the  courts.  While  there  is  the 
so-called  unwritten  constitution  of  England  and,  under  the  general  British 
character,  a  decided  feeling  for  the  protection  of  property,  if  at  any  time 
Parliament  should  pass  a  law  which  under  our  straight- jacket  constitutional 
interpretation  would  be  considered  a  taking  of  property,  such  Parliamentary 
law  would  be  enforced.  Shortly  after  the  close  of  the  war  there  was  a  royal 
commission  appointed  to  look  into  the  coal  situation.  That  commission  re¬ 
ported  in  favor  of  the  nationalization  of  the  mines.  The  rights  of  the  mine 
owners  were  to  be  protected  by  royalties  and  by  government  bonds.  If  that 
had  been  carried  out  by  the  then  liberal  government  you  would  have  had  a 
taking  away  of  property  without  due  compensation,  because  you  had  arbitra¬ 
rily  fixed  the  profits  to  be  made  by  the  owners  of  the  coal  lands.  Now,  of 
course,  we  might  have  gotten  around  that  by  calling  coal  a  public  utility. 
Lloyd  George,  in  order  to  resuscitate  the  Liberal  Party,  proposes  certain  land 
reformation.  If  anything  of  this  sort  is  done  the  rights  taken  over  will 
probably  be  compensated  by  bonds  and  not  by  cash,  which,  again,  would  be 
against  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

You  see  the  underlying  theory  of  non-interference  in  private  property  is 
being  gradually  changed  so  that  more  and  more  things  are  being  made  sub¬ 
ject  to  governmental  control.  I  have  given  you  this  point  of  view  because 
while  it  does  not,  according  to  the  American  mind,  justify  Mexico  in  its 
present  stand,  it  will  at  least  make  you  see  the  basis  on  which  the  opposing 
minds  argue.  Mexico  believes  that  so  long  as  its  enactments  are  for  the 
public  benefit  and  that  so  long  as  it  substantially  protects  the  rights  of  the 
individual  owner,  their  enactments  are  proper  and  that  they  should  be  al¬ 
lowed  to  put  them  into  effect.  This  is  the  point  of  view  which  Mr.  Carrillo 
emphasized  more  than  anything  else.  The  various  technical  points  he  believes 
can  be  adjusted  one  way  or  another. 

Question  :  Will  you  distinguish  between  ‘'rights”  and  “interests”? 

Answer:  Generally  speaking,  it  is  merely  a  question  of  definition.  Both 
words  are  extremely  vague  and  can  mean  something  or  nothing.  The  Mex¬ 
ican  Government  today  insists  that  according  to  Mexican  law  there  is  no 
interference  with  the  “rights”  of  these  oil  companies,  and  that  it  is  trying  to 
protect  the  “interests”  of  the  oil  companies  as  far  as  possible  under  the  laws 
by  making  the  best  interpretations  and  provisions  it  can.  I  use  the  word 
“interests”  here  in  the  sense  of  welfare. 

Question:  Will  you  define  the  right  to  eminent  domain? 

Answer:  The  right  of  eminent  domain  is  the  right  of  government,  or  of 
public  corporations  to  whom  the  right  has  been  granted,  to  take  private  prop¬ 
erty  for  public  use.  (Incidentally,  it  is  another  illustration  of  interference 
with  absolute  property  rights — the  right  not  to  sell  if  you  don’t  want  to.) 
The  principle  of  eminent  domain  is  first  that  it  shall  be  for  a  public  use  and 
for  a  public  use  only  and,  second,  that  full  compensation  shall  be  paid  for 
the  value  of  the  property.  As  I  see  it,  the  question  of  eminent  domain  doesn’t 
enter  at  all  into  the  oil  question.  It  does,  however,  into  the  ejido  question. 

Question  :  One  of  the  criticisms  of  the  law  in  Mexico  is  that  it  is  not 
impartially  carried  out,  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  favoritism  shown.  Is 
this  so? 


24 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Answer:  I  don’t  think  that  is  true  at  the  present  time  in  regard  to  oil  at 
all.  I  talked  with  a  correspondent  who  had  just  seen  the  vice-president  of 
one  big  American  oil  company,  and  this  oil  man  told  him  that  as  far  as  the 
application  of  the  law  was  concerned,  it  was  being  applied  evenly  and  fairly. 
Also  that  as  far  as  contacts  with  the  various  bureaus  of  the  Government  was 
concerned,  they  had  no  kick  at  all  about  the  present  administration — that  they 
were  never  treated  more  decently  or  fairly.  Their  only  fear  is  that  under  the 
law  their  rights  may  be  weakened,  that  something  might  be  done  in  the  future, 
that  they  are  giving  away  something. 

Question:  Has  this  argument  with  regard  to  the  influence  of  Spanish 
law  been  in  the  forefront  from  the  beginning  or  is  it  later  rationalization? 

Answer:  I  can’t  say. 

Question:  In  regard  to  sub-soil  rights  or  privileges — assuming  now  that 
a  company  has  the  use  of  a  property  under  a  fifty-year  agreement  and  the 
oil  should  ru7i  out  at  the  end  of  twenty-five  years  aiid  subsequently  discover 
in  tue  same  sub-soil  some  other  mineral  of  value — would  the  same  company 
holding  a  fifty-year  lease  be  permitted  to  exploit  the  newly  discovered  wealth? 

Answer:  As  I  understand  it,  no. 

Question  :  In  other  words,  if  the  same  company  should  discover  the  sub¬ 
sequent  sub-soil  wealth,  it  would  have  to  enter  into  a  new  agreement  in  order 
to  go  on  exploiting? 

Answer:  Absolutely.  The  claim  is  that  when  these  rights  were  given  they 
were  given  for  a  specific  purpose,  for  mining,  or  oil,  or  what-not,  and  that 
as  a  matter  of  fact  such  rights  are  what  we  would  call  inchoate  until  acted 
upon  by  some  active  taking  over  of  the  rights.  The  sort  of  thing  we  mean 
when  we  say  a  gift  is  not  completed  until  it  is  accepted. 

Question  :  Do  I  understand  that  the  time  limit  for  any  one  of  these 
companies  will  be  extended  fifty  years  and  then  thirty  years  if  oil  is  not 
completely  exhausted? 

Answer:  The  regulation  calls  upon  oil  companies  to  register  their  land 
now,  without  any  expense  to  the  companies,  and  that  on  registering,  the  Gov¬ 
ernment  will  give  these  companies  a  fifty-year  concession.  The  regulations 
are  a  very  long  Spanish  document  and  I  can’t  speak  authoritatively  about  it. 
I  have  not  seen  anything  with  regard  to  the  additional  period  beyond  fifty 
years  but  Calles  in  his  interview  with  us  said  very  definitely  that  there  was 
this  extension  period.  I  have  been  told  here,  also,  that  no  well  has  lasted 
30  years.  But  the  American  point  of  view  is,  “How  do  I  know  no  well  will 
last  more  than  30  years?  Maybe  some  of  these  wells  will  last  150  years  and 
by  limiting  me  you  take  away  this  possibility.” 

Question  :  I  wonder  if  there  might  also  be  a  difference  between  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  the  Spanish  as  to  what  constitutes  retroactivity? 

Answer:  Yes.  In  most  people’s  minds,  a  retroactive  law  is  a  bad  law,  but  it 
really  means  exactly  what  it  says,  a  law  which  affects  prior  acts  or  prior 
rights.  Because  many  retroactive  laws  are  injurious,  people  have  gotten  the 
general  impression  that  such  laws  are  bad.  We  are  passing  lots  of  retroactive 
laws  constantly  that  are  not  discussed  at  all.  For  instance,  we  pass  a  law 
every  year  or  two  in  the  State  of  New  York  saying  that  all  acts  of  notaries 
whether  in  due  form  or  not,  whether  their  commissions  have  expired  or  not, 
are  thereby  ratified  and  confirmed.  Practically  every  one  of  our  tax  laws  is 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


25 


retroactive.  It  is  unfair,  however,  to  pass  a  law  affecting  my  property  rights, 
taking  them  away  after  I  acquired  them  in  good  faith  at  a  time  when  it  was 
permissible  to  acquire  them,  but  even  in  America  we  have  to  do  this  occasion¬ 
ally  ourselves.  The  point  of  view  of  Mexico,  however,  as  Carrillo  put  it,  is 
— we  are  very  broad  on  the  question  of  the  validity  of  titles.  We  want  to 
get  things  settled.  We  have  had  some  English  companies  in  here  who  had, 
frankly,  bad  titles.  We  told  them  that  if  they  would  come  in  we  would 
adjust  their  titles,  give  them  new  titles,  especially  since  they  have  done  so 
much  work  drilling,  etc.  The  position  is  that  of  a  man  who  has  been  absent 
for  many,  many  years,  who  comes  back  and  finds  that  someone  has  built  on 
his  property.  He  isn’t  going  to  give  the  squatter  his  property  but  enters  into 
some  equitable  arrangement  with  him. 

Question  :  I  should  like  to  ask  whether  Mr.  Frank  has  been  able  to  check 
up  on  the  persistent  statement  that  all  the  rebellious  companies  were  Ameri¬ 
can? 

Answer:  I  think  it  is  substantially  true.  In  proof  of  this  Mr.  Carillo  got 
out  his  record,  a  big  book,  forty  or  fifty  pages  bound  together,  containing  the 
signatures  of  the  companies  that  had  signed  up,  and  told  me  to  examine  it,  but 
of  course  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  check  it  up. 

NOTE: 

Those  who  would  study  the  oil  question  more  carefully  should  read  Carleton 
Beals’  “Whose  Property  is  Kellogg  Protecting?’’  Nevj  Republic,  February  23,  1927. 

Also  write  Association  of  Producers  of  Petroleum  in  Mexico,  17  Battery  Place, 
New  York,  for  literature  giving  the  oil  companies’  point  of  view. 


26 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Address  by  and  Interview  with  Senor  Ramirez  Carrillo, 
Head  of  the  Legal  Staff  of  the  Secretary  of 
Industry,  Commerce  and  Labor,  Directly 
IN  Charge  of  Questions  Arising  out 
OF  THE  Petroleum  Laws 

Mr.  William  J.  Williams,  Interpreter 
(Mr.  Williams  was  of  the  Seminar  party) 

IT  GIVES  Senor  Carillo  much  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  present  this 
matter  to  such  a  company  from  the  United  States,  but  he  is  sorry  that 
under  the  circumstances  he  cannot  speak  in  the  full  and  detailed  manner 
that  he  would  like.  After  he  has  spoken  he  will  be  glad  to  answer  any  ques¬ 
tions  that  you  may  care  to  ask. 

To  give  light  on  the  petroleum  situation  he  has  to  give  first  a  brief  histor¬ 
ical  study. 

The  legislative  methods  of  Mexico  are  quite  different  from  those  of  the 
United  States.  Their  methods  follow  the  Spanish  forms  and  customs  and 
we  must  find  in  them  the  explanation  of  many  of  their  laws. 

Legislation  is  written,  and  then  the  custom  does  not  modify  the  law.  The 
failure  to  comply  with  the  legislation  does  not  destroy  the  law.  That  is 
the  Spanish  custom  and  different  from  ours  in  that  our  courts  may  decide 
on  interpretations  of  the  law.  Senor  Carrillo  wants  to  emphasize  that  he 
is  referring  to  the  spirit  of  the  law;  that  the  courts  do  not  modify  the  spirit 
of  the  law.  They  only  interpret  the  law.  But  in  the  interpreting  of  law 
they  do  not  take  into  account  the  customs,  only  the  written  law. 

All  the  Spanish  laws  from  the  time  of  Alfonso  down  to  the  independence 
of  Mexico  sustained  the  sovereignty  of  the  Crown  over  the  minerals  in  the 
land.  All  the  laws  written  for  Mexico  were  written  in  the  Constitution  of 
1 793  and  these  were  for  the  purpose  of  regulating  the  mineral  wealth  in 
Mexico,  which  was  then  called  the  Colony  of  New  Spain.  These  laws  said 
categorically  that  all  the  sub-soil  wealth  belonged  to  the  Crown.  They  did 
not  speak  of  petroleum  because  they  didn’t  know  anything  about  it,  but  they 
did  speak  of  tar,  calling  it  the  bitumen  of  the  earth,  and  stipulated  that  all 
this  belonged  to  the  Crown,  and  that  the  authority  for  exploiting  this  could 
only  be  given  by  the  Crown. 

In  the  12th  clause  of  the  Treaty  of  Cordoba,  signed  in  1821,  the  treaty 
which  gave  Mexico  her  independence,  it  was  provided  that  the  laws  of  Spain 
were  to  continue  in  Mexico  inasmuch  as  Mexico  had  no  written  laws  of  her 
own  at  that  time ;  and  these  laws  of  Spain  which  thus,  by  treaty,  became  the 
laws  of  Mexico,  definitely  settled  without  controversy  the  ownership  of  the 
sub-soil.  The  first  Mexican  mineral  law  was  made  in  1884.  The  Govern¬ 
ment,  through  it,  delegated  the  concessions  or  the  right  to  exploitation  of  the 
sub-soil  to  the  owner  of  the  surface  land.  This  was  extended  by  the  law  of 
3892  and  the  law  of  1909.  The  Government  conceded  what  was  its  own 
property,  in  favor  of  the  owner  of  the  surface  and  it  was  his ;  and  it  was  con¬ 
ditioned  so  by  the  Treaty  of  Cordoba  which  gave  the  rights  of  the  Crown  to 
the  new  government.  So  the  Government  became  responsible  for  these  same 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


27 


obligations  and  responsibilities.  In  1917  the  Government  clarified  the  situa¬ 
tion  by  again  offering  the  same  rights,  not  in  the  form  of  a  perfect  law  because 
the  perfect  law  not  only  has  to  take  into  consideration  the  actual  ownership, 
but  the  use  of  that  which  is  owned.  Article  27  indicates  that  the  Govern¬ 
ment  has  the  title  to  the  land  but  the  owner  has  the  use  of  it. 

The  Government  reserves  the  right  of  eminent  domain  over  all  surface 
and  sub-soil,  although  granting  concessions  to  the  owner  of  the  land,  both 
native  and  foreigner,  providing  that  the  foreigner  obeys  the  law  of  the  land. 
The  Constitution  requires  that  the  Government  shall  turn  over  to  individuals 
such  surface  and  sub-soil  rights  for  the  use  of  any  of  these  under  condition 
that  they  submit  themselves  to  the  tribunals  of  the  country.  So  that  the 
Government  does  not  consider  it  its  own  property  but  only  that  it  has  the 
right  that  every  sovereign  state  has  to  dispose  of  all  public  property  to  the 
best  advantage  of  all  the  public  in  the  use  of  it.  So  that  it  does  not  wish 
to  have  any  control  over  it  except  in  the  sense  that  it  will  control  it  for 
everybody.  It  doesn’t  seek  to  have  any  rewards  for  itself  and  so  it  has 
established  the  fact  that  in  the  laws  of  1917  the  owner  of  the  superficial 
domain  owns  the  sub-soil  and  receives  the  royalty  of  it — but  this  is  only  one 
aspect  of  the  problem. 

The  following  is  the  most  significant  aspect  of  the  problem.  All  our  laws 
for  territories  given  in  1909,  in  1842,  1856  and  in  1886  prohibit  foreigners 
acquiring  lands  within  a  zone  of  100  kilometers  from  the  border  and  the 
coast.  And  the  same  laws  which  established  the  concessions  for  exploitation 
for  many  years  are  understood  as  coming  under  the  same  regulation.  The 
laws  that  establish  this  provision  are  laws  of  public  rights.  The  Constitution 
of  1857  and  all  the  laws  that  were  derived  from  this  constitution  establish 
that  the  violating  of  these  prohibitions  do  not  produce  rights  which  nullify 
them  and  make  them  of  no  effect. 

Senor  Carrillo  then  read  from  the  Civil  Code  of  1884.  [This  is  over 
property  rights  and  is  still  in  force.] 

The  7th  Article:  Acts  in  violation  of  a  law  do  not  render  a  law  null  and 
void ;  a  law  is  rendered  null  and  void  only  by  a  later  law. 

9th  Article:  The  failure  to  obey  or  live  up  to  the  law  does  not  nullify 
that  law. 

15th  Article:  The  laws  in  which  public  rights  are  considered  cannot  be 
altered  by  custom  or  rendered  void  in  their  effect  hy  arrangements  carried  on 
between  private  individuals. 

It  is  a  fact  that  90  per  cent  of  all  the  concessions  given  to  the  oil  companies 
were  given  hy  private  arrangements  and  within  the  prohibited  zone  and  not 
one  of  them  was  authorized  by  the  Federal  Government.  Because  of  that 
these  arrangements  did  not  provide  any  legal  rights  and  do  not  constitute  any 
rights  at  the  present  time.  The  oil  companies  could  not  plead  ignorance  of 
the  law.  In  no  country  is  ignorance  of  the  law  a  valid  excuse  for  infringement. 

But  the  men  who  had  secured  oil  properties  in  the  prohibited  zones  had 
accepted  them  in  good  faith,  have  certain  rights  in  the  matter  and  the  14th 
article  of  the  law  now  in  force  recognizes  these  rights — but  it  does  not 
recognize  them  because  of  the  origin  of  them.  It  recognizes  them  because 
of  the  good  faith  of  those  that  have  secured  them,  because  our  government 
is  a  just  and  equitable  government  and  recognizes  moral  forces  as  more 
powerful  than  brute  forces.  In  recognizing  these  rights  it  has  recognized 


28 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


these  companies’  investors  and  because  of  them  has  recognized  the  life-time 
right  of  those  that  have  secured  these  concessions.  This  is  because  everyone 
who  invests  a  dollar  in  the  rights  of  a  company  is  entitled  to  the  interests 
of  that  company  as  long  as  it  remains  in  existence. 

But  there  is  another  aspect  to  the  problem  just  as  serious  as  this  first  one. 
How  did  a  good  many  of  the  oil  companies  come  to  secure  their  oil  conces¬ 
sions  in  the  first  place?  The  land  in  the  present  oil  regions,  because  formerly 
thought  of  little  value,  was  handed  down  from  father  to  son  without  any 
written  statements  regarding  the  affair,  in  spite  of  the  law  that  requires  that 
in  order  to  inherit  the  property  of  a  father,  the  son  should  come  before  the 
courts  and  register  the  property  in  his  own  name.  Nothing  of  this  kind 
was  done  with  these  properties.  The  real  owners  of  the  land  or  people  in 
actual  possession  were  Indians  of  most  unhappy  condition;  they  couldn’t 
write,  had  no  kind  of  education  and  lived  on  their  lands  in  a  very  primitive 
fashion.  The  commercial  interests  had  no  desire  for  these  properties  because 
of  the  small  value  of  the  land.  Most  of  it  was  worth  five  pesos  a  hectare 
[2V2  acres].  That  was  the  condition  that  the  prospectors,  the  exploiters 
found  when  they  discovered  oil  there.  Now  these  Indians  were  naturally 
tenacious  of  their  land,  and  though  thought  of  little  value,  would  not  sell 
and  were  hard  to  drive  off  the  lands.  But  unscrupulous  people  were  found 
who,  for  pay,  were  willing  to  come  and  claim  these  lands  as  their  own, 
though  they  might  never  have  set  foot  in  them  before.  Thus  many  of  these 
“property  owners’’  who  did  not  have  a  single  right,  sold  what  did  not  belong 
to  them.  The  Government  has  not  a  single  responsibility  if  the  one  who 
buys  a  thing  does  not  buy  it  in  a  legitimate  way,  and  the  best  oil  properties 
were  thus  secured.  I  could  show  you,  if  you  wish,  records  of  land  that  was 
claimed  by  at  least  twenty  proprietors — and  not  one  of  them  could  prove  his 
own  right  to  the  land.  With  such  bad  titles  the  first  exploiters  formed 
companies  with  great  resources  and  established  people  under  their  own  employ 
to  enter  the  lands  and  properties.  The  Indians  could  not  defend  themselves 
through  their  ignorance  and  because  of  the  bad  faith  of  a  few  of  the  minor 
authorities  of  their  region. 

Not  all  the  companies  proceeded  in  this  fashion.  Many  of  them  complied 
in  an  honorable  way  with  the  rights  of  purchase  and  they  have  been  able  to 
prove  their  rights  and  have  submitted  themselves  to  the  present  petroleum 
laws,  whereas  other  companies  have  not. 

The  laws  are  not  bad  and  the  best  proof  is  that  of  three  million  hectares 
that  were  secured  prior  to  1917,  companies  holding  two  million  six  hundred 
thousand  hectares  have  submitted  to  the  law.  There  is  just  a  small  nucleus 
remaining,  ten  companies,  of  which  three  or  four  small  companies  cannot 
prove  their  rights  and  in  order  to  gain  support  for  themselves  have  deceived 
two  or  three  companies  of  good  faith  to  follow  them  in  their  protests.  If 
any  of  you  doubt  this  statement  I  can  prove  it  to  you  because  I  have  the 
records  of  it  but  cannot  show  them  to  you  right  now  because  the  offices  are 
closed  at  5  :30,  but  any  day,  tomorrow  or  any  day,  I  can  show  them  to  you 
if  you  wish.  Very  naturally,  whatever  might  have  been  the  law,  these  small 
companies  would  never  have  submitted  because  they  cannot  prove  the  legiti¬ 
macy  of  their  possessions,  and  these  are  the  companies  that  are  sowing  dis¬ 
satisfaction  and  misunderstanding  and  they  think  that  because  of  having 
deceived  two  or  three  large  companies  that  they  are  right. 


ox  Relations  With  Mexico 


29 


It  is  not  a  question  of  money  or  royalties.  The  Government  that  puts 
down  the  law  doesn’t  demand  royalty  over  any  private  properties.  In  no 
case  does  the  Government  demand  a  royalty  over  lands,  whether  secured 
before  1917  or  since.  The  rewards  and  royalties  and  profits  of  the  land  are 
in  every  case  for  the  proprietor  of  the  surface  land. 

The  pages  of  the  records  of  the  acquiring  of  oil  concessions  are  so  black 
they  would  horrify  you  only  to  know  about  them.  I  can  only  tell  you  that 
there  are  files  of  oil  arrangements  that  actually  drip  blood. 

*  *  *  *  * 

Question:  In  your  statement  you  indicate  that  of  three  millio7i  hectares 
of  land  devoted  to  oil  production,  companies  holding  two  million  six  hundred 
thousand  hectares  have  already  signified  their  willingness  to  submit  themselves 
to  the  new  laws.  Are  we  then  to  understand  that  the  ten  or  so  companies 
who  signed  the  petition  of  December  30th  addressed  to  President  Calles  ask¬ 
ing  for  a  delay  of  two  or  three  months  in  the  application  of  the  new  laws, 
including  the  Standard  Oil  Company  of  New  Jersey,  the  Great  Holland 
Company  and  the  Pierce,  the  Great  British  Company  are  the  owners  of  only 
400,000  hectares  of  oil  land? 

Answer:  The  protesters  represent  even  less  than  400,000  hectares.  Most 
of  the  protesters  are  Mexican  companies  who  have  no  right  to  protest. 

Question  :  Is  it  the  claifn  of  the  Mexican  Government  that  the  grants  in 
perpetuity  (made  by  Diaz  and  his  followers)  were  against  the  then  existing 
Mexican  Constitution? 

Answer:  Mr.  Carillo  doesn’t  know  of  any  such  grants.  There  were  only 
two  contracts  so  far  as  he  knows  made  during  that  time  and  these  were 
made  for  a  limited  period.  He  is  referring  to  contracts  made  by  the  govern¬ 
ment. 

Question  :  Does  the  Mexican  Government  claim  that  the  concession  of 
the  sub-soil  rights  to  the  owners  of  the  surface  rights  are  contrary  to  the 
Mexican  constitutio7i? 

Answer:  The  Government  is  the  proprietor  of  all  the  sub-soil  and  gives 
the  right  to  the  owner  of  the  surface  to  exploit  the  sub-soil  wealth  because 
the  right  to  the  sub-soil  never  was  a  civil  accession  to  the  property.  All  of 
the  petroleum  laws  really  come  under  the  mining  code  and  the  mining  legis¬ 
lation  which  was  legislated  for  the  sub-soil  was  independent  of  civil  property. 
In  the  year  1884,  the  Government  conceded  that  which  was  its  own,  accord¬ 
ing  to  all  previous  legislation,  to  the  proprietor  of  the  surface  and  for  this 
reason  the  present  law  has  recognized  that  those  who  acquired  legally  the 
right  to  exploit  the  sub-soil  should  be  permitted  to  do  so,  outside,  of  course, 
of  the  provisions  of  Article  27. 

Question  :  IV ere  these  co7icessions  of  sub-soil  oil  rights,  under  the  law 
of  1884,  constitutional  U7ider  the  existing  co7istitution? 

Answer:  There  were  no  concessions  made  under  the  law  of  1884  and 
after  that  there  was  the  concession  made  to  the  Eagle  Company  which  was 
for  a  short  time  and  has  been  recognized  by  the  new  law.  The  other  was  to 
Mr.  Walker,  an  oil  privilege  which  he  didn’t  use.  He  imported  machinery 
for  the  development  of  oil  lands,  but  he  did  not  comply  with  the  terms  of 
his  contract,  and  although  he  failed  to  do  so,  was  relieved  of  the  necessity  of 
paying  import  duties  on  the  machinery  he  brought  in.  The  further  acquisi¬ 
tions  in  the  field  of  oil  were  arranged  entirely  between  private  persons,  and 


30 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


these  the  Government  is  not  obliged  to  respect  because  in  order  to  do  that 
it  would  be  necessary  for  the  Government  to  give  its  written  authorization, 
and  there  is  not  one  case  where  the  Government  has  given  such  authorization. 
Nevertheless  the  Mexican  Government  has  desired  to  respect  all  contracts  or 
claims  in  good  faith  in  a  high  spirit  of  justice  and  morality  although  in  the 
full  rights  of  the  case  the  Government  has  had  no  obligation. 

Question:  Who  were  these  private  persons'? 

Answer:  The  persons  who  came  in  and  acquired  territory  and  who  turned 
over  to  them  the  territory  they  acquired. 

Question:  What  does  the  Mexican  Government  mean  by  "the  life  of  the 
company?”  As  long  as  the  company  exists? 

Answer:  As  long  as  there  is  oil  there  to  be  produced.  Obviously  the  life 
of  the  company  is  the  duration  of  the  oil  in  the  sub-soil;  as  long  as  there  is 
exploitation  of  the  sub-soil  for  which  the  company  may  continue  its  existence. 

Question:  Then  what  is  the  quarrel  about? 

Answer:  The  reason  is  that  there  is  a  small  group  of  companies  that  can¬ 
not  prove  their  rights  because  they  haven’t  any  in  the  light  of  the  law.  They 
have  set  in  motion  propaganda  that  the  laws  are  bad  and  are  creating  all 
possible  demands  in  order  to  draw  to  themselves  as  large  a  number  of  other 
companies  in  good  standing,  but,  happily,  as  I  said  to  you,  they  represent  a 
small  percentage  and  a  small  range  of  territory. 

Question:  Will  you  give  a  little  more  information  about  these  companies 
holding  these  400,000  hectares,  which  you  said  have  caused  all  the  protest? 

Answer:  The  English  companies  which  represent  44  per  cent  of  all  the  oil 
interests  have  entirely  submitted  themselves  to  the  laws  without  any  discus¬ 
sion  whatever  since  September  last  and  if  you  want  any  proof  I’ll  give  it  to 
you.  The  Association  of  Oil  Producers  took  their  names,  without  knowing 
that  they  had  submitted  themselves,  in  preparing  its  protest.  I  cannot  give 
you  the  entire  list  now  from  memory  but  these  companies  also  have  complied 
with  the  law:  The  Gulf  Coast,  the  East  Coast  Oil,  the  Southern  Pacific, 
the  National  Petroleum  Company,  the  Seaboard  Oil  Co.,  the  L.  A.  Richmond 
Petroleum  (a  subsidiary  of  the  Standard  Oil  of  California),  the  Continental, 
the  Transcontinental,  the  Huasteca  (a  Mexican  company). 

Question  :  What  about  the  Alellon  company,  the  Mexican  Gulf  Oil 
Company? 

Answer:  It  is  a  company  in  good  faith  and  standing.  It  doesn’t  possess 
many  interests — not  33,000  hectares.  It  is  one  of  the  companies  which  have 
followed  the  three  or  four  companies  that  cannot  justify  their  rights.  The 
Mexican  Gulf  Co.  know  they  can  justify  themselves  as  they  have  always  kept 
the  closest  relations  with  the  Government  and  always  have  obtained  what 
they  wanted  from  the  Government.  For  this  reason  we  are  surprised  at  their 
attitude.  They  have  no  proprietary  lands  so  are  really  not  affected  them¬ 
selves;  they  have  only  exploitation  contracts  and  the  law  recognizes  their 
light  as  long  as  these  contracts  of  exploitation  remain  in  force. 

Question  :  It  is  the  claim  of  some  of  the  oil  companies  that  if  they  sign 
up  for  these  new  leases,  their  original  titles,  that  they  say  they  can  defend 
injhe  courts,  will  be  jeopardized. 

Answer:  To  all  companies — to  all  there  are,  the  Government  has  said  in 
writing,  based  on  the  petroleum  laws,  every  oil  company  may  enjoy  fully 
its  rights  during  the  entire  life  of  the  company,  regardless  of  what  it  may  be. 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


31 


The  Government’s  correspondence  has  all  been  given  to  the  public,  and  in 
every  respect  it  will  be  found  to  comply  with  all  the  formalities  of  the  law — 
and  there  is  no  getting  out  of  this!  It  has  written  to  every  company  saying: 
“This  is  what  the  law  says  and  this  is  what  we  obligate  ourselves  to  respect 
regarding  you.  We  are  not  to  blame  if  you  do  not  know  our  system  of  law 
and  do  not  properly  interpret  our  laws.”  For  this  reason,  to  all  who  have 
asked  for  an  opinion  or  interpretation  of  the  law,  it  has  been  given  in  written 
form  and  what  I  say  to  you  now  regarding  the  rights  has  been  said  many  times 
individually  and  collectively  to  all  companies  by  word,  in  writing  and  by 
means  of  official  documents  since  more  than  a  half  year  ago. 

Question  :  What  is  the  real  nature  of  the  requirement  of  the  renuncia¬ 
tion  of  diplomatic  protection  and  what  proportion  of  American  companies 
have  accepted  that  requirement? 

Answer:  We  did  not  require,  prior  to  1917,  any  submission  to  this  clause 
but  we  did  require  the  relinquishment  of  the  right  to  foreign  diplomatic 
interests  after  1917.  In  a  word,  we  simply  require  that  foreigners  shall 
submit  themselves  to  our  courts  and  that  they  shall  not  have  any  other 
recourse  than  the  laws  concede  to  the  Mexicans  themselves.  I  want  to  make 
clear  that  in  respect  to  acquisitions  before  1917  we  do  not  require  this  renun¬ 
ciation  on  the  part  of  any  foreigner  in  order  to  grant  his  new  titles. 

Senor  Carillo  in  concluding  said,  “I  want  you  to  carry  away  the  realization 
that  the  Government  of  Mexico  recognizes  that  the  best  force  of  any  govern¬ 
ment  and  the  only  true  force  is  its  moral  power.” 


32 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Group  Interview  with  the  Archbishop  of  Michoacan, 
Leopoldo  Ruiz;  the  Bishop  of  San  Luis  Potosi, 
Miguel  del  Amora;  and  the  Bishop 
OF  Tobasco,  Pascual  Diaz 

Greetings  by  Rabbi  Isaac  Landman: 

We  men  and  women,  all  of  us  Americans,  have  come  to  Mexico  with 
the  hope  of  ascertaining  for  ourselves  the  true  conditions  as  they  exist 
in  the  Republic  today.  We  have  been  very  fortunate  in  meeting,  thus  far, 
representatives  of  the  ^  Government,  representatives  of  the  trades  and  indus¬ 
tries,  and  in  having  conversations  with  the  people  whom  we  have  met  in  the 
street.  We  are  therefore  at  this  moment  particularly  grateful,  and  deem  our¬ 
selves  fortunate  that  you  officials  of  the  Church  have  so  courteously  consented 
to  receive  us  and  to  reply  to  certain  questions  upon  which  we  desire  light,  that 
we  may  be  able  to  explain  the  position  of  the  Church  in  Mexico  from  the 
Church’s  point  of  view,  equally  with  that  of  the  other  avenues  in  which  we 
have  walked  for  ourselves. 

What  we  desire  most  of  all  is  that  when  we  return  home  we  may  be  able 
to  give  to  those  of  our  own  circles  and  perhaps  to  a  wider  circle  still  the 
information  which  we  have  here  gotten.  The  object  of  our  coming  is,  I 
assure  you,  solely  a  mission  of  good-will,  that  we  may,  in  bringing  back  the 
truth  as  each  of  us  ascertains  it  for  himself,  create  a  more  intelligent  interest 
in  the  United  States  about  the  position  in  Mexico. 

It  was  with  that  object  in  view  that  we  submitted  a  series  of  questions, 
assuring  you  that  we  are  thoroughly  conscious  of  the  delicacy  of  our  mission 
here  and  are  desirous  only  of  ascertaining  the  facts  as  they  really  are. 

Archbishop  Ruiz,  who  was  the  spokesman,  answered  through  the  inter¬ 
preter,  Mr.  Hutchinson: 

We  shall  be  glad  to  answer  your  questions,  one  by  one,  and  if  in  the  course 
of  the  reply  some  other  points  arise  on  which  light  should  be  required,  we 
shall  be  pleased  to  answer  them.  We  are  very  glad  to  have  this  opportunity 
to  make  a  full  statement,  particularly  considering  that  what  you  desire  to 
establish  is  the  truth  and  as  we  have  no  need  to  conceal  anything  in  answer¬ 
ing  questions,  are  extremely  pleased  to  put  ourselves  at  your  orders. 

Question  :  For  what  reasons  are  the  Catholic  priests  not  functioning  in 
Mexico  today? 

Answer:  It  is  impossible  for  the  Catholic  Church  to  accept  the  Constitu¬ 
tional  laws  of  Mexico,  since  such  would  create  a  virtual  schism,  insomuch 
as  the  priests  would  be  subjected  to  the  civil  authorities  without  dependence 
on  their  hierarchical  superiors,  and  the  civil  authorities  would  be  empowered 
to  authorize  as  ministers  those  who  have  not  been  ordained,  and  to  deliver 
to  them  churches  and  ecclesiastical  offices  and  dignities  as  pastors,  bishops, 
etc.  ...  In  fact  we  have  already  seen  with  deepest  indignation  that  churches 
built  by  Catholics  for  Catholic  worship,  have  been  delivered  to  schismatics, 
enemies  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

The  Catholic  Hierarchy  of  the  United  States  has  seen  so  clearly  this  view¬ 
point  that  in  their  Pastoral  Letter  of  the  12th  of  December,  1926,  they  say — 
“The  present  conflict,  as  one  part  of  the  war  against  religion  in  Mexico 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


33 


which  had  its  inception  almost  a  century  ago,  to  a  greater  degree  than  any 
preceding  it,  comes  from  an  attempt  at  nothing  less  than  the  destruction  of 
the  Divine  constitution  of  the  Church  by  reducing  it  to  the  status  of  a  State- 
controlled  schismatical  body,  without  the  right  to  form,  train  and  educate 
her  own  clergy,  to  have  a  sufficient  number  of  them  for  the  care  of  souls,  to 
find  means  for  her  support  ...  In  fact  the  Church  in  Mexico  has  no  choice ; 
for  merely  to  continue  her  public  religious  functions  under  these  oppressive 
and  unjust  conditions  would  be  an  open  declaration  that  she  has  submitted 
to  them.” 

Question  :  What  are  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  in  regard  to 
Church  property? 

Answer:  The  answer  to  this  question  is  given  by  the  American  Catholic 
Hierarchy  in  the  following  words  of  their  Pastoral  Letter  above  mentioned : 

“Officially,  there  are  no  churches  in  Mexico ;  for  a  church  cannot  possess 
anything,  lacks  the  right  to  petition  for  redress  or  grievances,  cannot  sue  or 
be  sued  in  the  civil  courts,  and  in  general  is  entirely  without  legal  standing. 
Clergymen  are  disfranchised  by  the  act  of  ordination.  A  church  cannot  own 
the  buildings  in  which  its  public  worship  is  held.  It  cannot  possess  endow¬ 
ments.  It  cannot  take  up  a  collection  or  a  subscription  outside  the  doors  of 
the  building  used  for  religious  services.  That  building,  moreover,  is  owned 
by  the  Government,  though  paid  for  and  supported  by  the  people.  The 
Government  merely  allows  the  rightful  owner  to  use  it  at  the  good  pleasure 
of  State  officials.  All  churches  in  Mexico,  therefore,  have  to  be  supported 
by  collections  during  the  services.  Now  churches  are  mainly  supported  every¬ 
where  by  subscriptions  accepted  apart  from  the  acts  of  worship  themselves. 
With  us,  nearly  all  church  building  is  paid  for  in  that  way.  This  is  forbidden 
in  Mexico,  not  by  a  mere  regulation,  but  by  constitutional  enactment. 

“In  order  to  make  this  enactment  effective,  a  church  is  not  allowed  to 
possess  houses  for  its  bishops,  priests,  ministers,  teachers  or  superintendents. 
Its  future  may  not  be  provided  for,  because  it  cannot  have  a  seminary  in 
which  a  clergy  may  be  trained  to  take  places  made  vacant  by  death  or  in¬ 
capacity.  The  fact  that  a  church  uses  a  building  is  considered  good  ground 
for  holding  that  it  really  belongs  to  that  religious  body.  It  may  then  be 
seized  and  confiscated.  If  a  clergyman  even  rents  a  home  for  himself,  the 
law  provides  that  it  may  be  seized  on  mere  suspicion.  Relatives  of  clergy¬ 
men  are  threatened  with  the  loss  of  their  own  personal  property  by  confisca¬ 
tion  on  the  ground  that  such  property  really  belongs  to  a  church,  for  the  law 
decrees  that  mere  suspicion  in  such  a  case  is  full  ground  for  the  presumption 
that  the  property  is  held  for  the  Church.  All  properties  devoted  by  religious 
bodies  to  educational  or  charitable  purposes  are  subject  to  confiscation.  In 
order  to  make  it  impossible  for  a  church  to  secure  a  building  of  any  kind,  it 
is  provided  that  in  case  of  seizure,  no  trial  by  jury  shall  be  allowed  should  its 
real  owner  appeal  for  justice.” 

Question:  What  is  the  article  of  the  Constitution  that  covers  this? 

Answer:  Articles  27  and  130. 

Question:  Is  there  no  seminary  functioning  now?  Some  of  us  have  heard 
that  there  is  a  seminary  functioning. 

Answer:  There  remain  several  seminaries  open  and  functioning.  There 
is  one  here  in  Mexico  City,  one  in  Michoacan  and  two  others  elsewhere,  but 
at  any  time  the  Government  may  close  them  on  any  pretext. 


34 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Question:  Did  the  Church  have  to  obtain  permission  from  the  Govern¬ 
ment  to  keep  these  open? 

Answer The  Church  couldn’t  ask  for  such  permission.  The  Govern¬ 
ment  has  no  right  to  close  them,  furthermore  the  Church  could  not  assume 
the  position  of  .asking  the  Government  for  permission  to  continue  its  rightful 
work. 

Question  :  Isn’t  it  a  fact  that  these  buildings  in  which  seminaries  exist 
have  already  been  used  two  or  three  times  by  the  Government? 

Answer:  The  building  in  Michoacan  is  being  used  for  the  governor’s  resi¬ 
dence,  another  for  a  school  of  arts  and  one  for  municipal  schools,  etc.  The 
seminaries  that  are  now  functioning  are  doing  so  in  rented  houses. 

Question  :  I  raised  the  question  of  ownership  of  churches  with  one  of  the 
officials  here.  The  Government  contends  that  the  property  is  the  property 
of  the  State  because  the  people  built  these  buildings. 

Answer:  The  reply  is  that  in  the  majority  of  cases  the  churches  were  built 
by  individuals,  by  rich  individuals,  who  furnished  all  the  money  and  gave 
the  buildings  to  the  Church.  In  other  cases  the  churches  were  built  by 
subscriptions,  by  loyal  religious  associations,  not  by  the  public  in  general. 
And  in  every  case  they  were  given  to  the  Church  and  not  to  the  State.  As 
a  case  in  point,  we  will  cite  the  Church  of  Jesus  and  the  Hospital  of  Jesus 
which  were  built  by  the  funds  of  Cortez  and  by  him  deeded  over  to  the 
Church,  but  are  now  held  to  be  Government  property. 

Question  :  Suppose  that  today  a  group  of  five  or  six  Catholics  said, 
“Here,  gentlemen,  is  half  a  million  pesos.  Build  yourselves  a  church.” 
What  would  be  the  Government’ s  attitude? 

Answer:  They  would  consider  that  these  pesos  had  been  handed  into  the 
Federal  treasury. 

Question:  What  is  the  attitude  of  the  Catholic  Bishops  toward  those 
parts  of  the  Constitution  dealing  with  Church  property? 

Answer:  The  answer  to  this  question  is  in  our  petition  to  Congress  dated 
Sept.  6,  1926,  for  the  reformation  of  the  Mexican  Constitution,  wherein, 
notwithstanding  the  full  right  of  the  Church  to  own  all  the  property  neces¬ 
sary  for  the  fulfilling  of  her  mission  on  earth,  we,  led  by  spirit  of  conciliation, 
did  but  ask  recognition  for  the  Church’s  right  of  property  over  her  churches, 
parish  houses,  bishops’  houses,  seminaries,  colleges,  schools,  hospitals,  and  sim¬ 
ilar  buildings  for  instruction  and  charitable  purposes,  waiving  our  right  even 
to  other  properties  necessary  for  the  support  of  these. 

Of  course  we  cannot  and  must  not  recognize  in  the  State  the  alleged  right 
of  property  of  all  the  churches  and  other  buildings  and  properties  given  by 
the  faithful  people  for  religious  purposes. 

It  is  convenient  to  state  that  the  churches  and  annexed  buildings  as  well 
as  those  buildings  necessary  for  the  Church’s  mission  were  excepted  from 
confiscation  by  the  Constitution  of  1857;  but  the  Constitution  of  1917  ex¬ 
tended  the  confiscation  even  to  these  properties,  and  now  the  bill  of  regula¬ 
tion  of  the  Article  130  of  the  same  constitution,  proposed  by  President  Calles, 
extends  the  confiscation  even  to  church  furniture,  with  nothing  excluded,  not 
even  the  candles  or  the  floor  brushes,  etc. 

Question:  In  America  we  have  heard  again  and  again  that  the  Church 
owns  vast  properties :  thousands — maybe  more,  acres — that  in  these  proper¬ 
ties  are  valuable  mines,  perhaps  valuable  oil  properties.  In  the  petition  of 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


35 


the  Bishops  to  which  you  have  just  referred^  do  they,  the  Bishops,  mean  that 
they  are  willing  to  relinquish  these  lands? 

Answer:  Yes.  Absolutely  everything  outside  of  those  buildings  necessary 
for  the  Church  and  its  teaching  needs.  The  petition  addressed  to  Congress, 
just  referred  to,  was  turned  down  because  Congress  declared  that  the  petition¬ 
ers  had  no  rights.  Ever  since  1857  the  Church  has  been  illegally  deprived  of 
all  its  property,  having  the  liberty,  however,  to  carry  on  through  gifts  of 
the  people. 

Question:  What  is  the  official  attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  regard 
to  the  attendance  of  Catholic  children  in  the  public  primary  schools? 

Answer:  The  official  attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  regard  to  the 
attendance  of  Catholic  children  in  the  public  primary  schools  is  that  all 
Catholic  children  be  trained  in  Catholic  schools ;  but  if  this  is  not  possible 
the  Bishops  can  permit  attendance  at  the  public  primary  schools,  provided 
that  in  these  schools  they  are  not  taught  anything  contrary  to  the  Catholic 
faith  and  morals. 

Question:  What  has  the  Catholic  Church  done  for  the  education  of  rural 
children  in  Mexico  during  the  past  50  years? 

Answer:  Before  the  Revolution  almost  in  every  parish,  in  the  principal 
dioceses,  even  in  rural  districts  and  in  the  haciendas,  there  were  Catholic 
schools  for  children.  In  the  cities,  there  were  so  many  Catholic  schools  and 
colleges  that  the  attendance  of  children  was  superior  to  that  of  the  public 
schools,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  Church  had  been  deprived  of  all 
her  endowments  since  1857.  Besides,  there  were  almost  in  all  churches, 
especially  in  the  rural  districts,  catechism  instructions  of  the  Catholic  doc¬ 
trines,  and  preparations  of  children  for  the  first  confession  and  communion, 
all  of  which  services  being  of  great  benefit  to  the  people. 

Question  :  What  is  the  extent  of  Catholic  hospitals,  orphanages  and  other 
institutions  of  like  nature  in  the  rural  districts? 

Answer:  In  almost  every  parish  there  exist  Catholic  associations  for  visit¬ 
ing  and  helping  the  poor  and  sick  people;  and  many  of  these  associations  have 
small  hospitals  for  the  few  patients  who  seek  a  hospital,  for  our  poor  people 
are  accustomed  to  be  treated  at  home. 

As  an  instance,  in  the  Diocese  of  Guadalajara,  as  per  official  information 


of  1925-26,  the  following  data  is  given: 

Sick  attended  at  home  .....  4,482 

Sick  attended  in  hospitals  .....  1,792 

Surgical  operations  ......  727 

Meals  distributed  to  the  poor  and  sick  .  .  .  1,209,358 

Free  prescriptions  after  consultations  .  .  .  49,422 

Religious  instructions  to  children  .  .  .  9,937 

Voluntary  contributions  and  subscriptions  .  .  $120,690 

Expenses  .......  $118,535 


Question:  If  the  Catholic  Church  in  Mexico  had  done  its  duty  in  the 
field  of  education  in  the  rural  districts,  why  is  there  so  much  illiteracy  there 
today? 

Answer:  There  are  several  reasons  for  that.  One  is  that  for  a  population 
of  fifteen  million  people  there  existed  only  3,500  or  at  the  most  5,000  priests. 
In  the  northern  and  southern  districts  the  population  is  so  scattered  it  was 
physically  impossible  for  the  ground  to  be  covered  by  so  few  ministers. 
Another  reason  is  that  the  Indian  population,  in  which  the  greatest  illiteracy 


36 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


occurs,  is  naturally  disinclined  to  send  their  children  to  school  because  of 
their  feeling  that  their  children  are  needed  for  work  in  the  fields.  Naturally 
the  Church  could  not  by  force  oblige  these  parents  to  send  their  children  to 
school.  The  Mexican  Hierarchy  has  made  a  careful  study  of  the  condition 
of  literacy  in  Mexico  prior  to  1857  and  found  that  in  comparison  with  Eng¬ 
land  at  that  time  there  was  less  illiteracy  here  in  this  country. 

Question:  What  is  the  official  attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  toward 
the  ( non-Catholic)  labor  movement'? 

Answer:  The  Catholic  Church  in  Mexico  is  not  hostile  to  the  labor  move¬ 
ment,  as  has  been  shown  by  her  action  within  her  sphere  long  before  the  late 
revolution.  The  Church  forbids  the  Catholic  workers  to  give  their  sanction 
to  associations  in  which  they  may  have  to  surrender  their  liberty  and  their 
conscience.  Witness  what  the  Church  has  done  in  favor  of  the  workers’ 
movement  in  the  last  Pastoral  Letter  of  the  American  Episcopate  of  Decem¬ 
ber  12,  1926. 

Question  :  What  provisions  have  been  made  by  the  Catholic  Church  for 
the  conducting  of  services  since  August  Ij  1926? 

Answer:  The  laws  having  made  impossible  the  practice  of  religion  in  the 
churches,  the  Bishops  have  limited  themselves  to  authorizing  the  worship  in 
private  homes,  and  to  reminding  the  priests  of  their  obligation  of  attending 
the  sick  even  at  peril  of  imprisonment,  fines  and  other  persecution,  even  to 
death  itself. 

Question  :  What  has  the  Government  done  about  this  matter? 

Answer:  In  many  parts  the  Government  has  stopped  the  practice  of  re¬ 
ligion  even  in  private  homes  and  the  administering  of  the  Sacraments  in 
them,  even  when  most  needed  and,  where  possible,  has  gone  to  the  extreme 
of  declaring  to  be  a  public  ceremony,  and  therefore  forbidden  under  penalty 
of  fine  and  imprisonment,  any  act  of  worship  in  a  private  home  attended  by 
a  single  person  not  of  the  family. 

Question  :  In  what  respect  are  the  privileges  of  priests  different  today 
from  what  they  were  before  1857? 

Answer:  The  privileges  of  priests  before  1857  were  those  corresponding 
to  a  “Concordat”  between  Church  and  State.  The  clergy  had  the  political 
and  civil  rights  of  every  citizen,  were  judged  exclusively  by  the  ecclesiastical 
tribunals  and  could  wear  their  habits  and  conduct  their  ministrations  outside 
of  the  churches,  own  property,  etc. 

Question  :  Does  the  Catholic  Church  maintain  that  there  is  religious 
persecution  in  Mexico? 

Answer:  It  is  sufficient  to  read  Articles  3,  27  and  130  of  the  Constitution 
of  1917  to  be  convinced  that  the  Pope,  the  Bishops  and  the  Catholics  of  the 
entire  world  are  right  in  considering  Mexico  to  be  under  the  yoke  of  a  re¬ 
ligious  persecution  which  pretends  to  legal  right.  With  good  reason  the 
clergy  and  Catholic  people  of  Mexico  call  persecution  the  application  of  these 
laws,  as  also  the  illegal  action  of  every  kind  of  civil  and  military  authority 
which  has  practically  stripped  of  guarantees  the  Bishops,  priests  and  Catholics 
in  general.  The  proofs  of  this  statement  are : 

First  that  many  bishops,  without  any  form  of  trial  and  even  without  form 
of  accusation,  are  imprisoned,  and  hundreds  of  priests  have  been  arrested  and 
prevented  from  attendance  in  their  parishes.  Second,  that  many  Catholics, 
for  the  sole  reason  of  being  Catholics  or  Knights  of  Columbus,  have  been 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


37 


apprehended,  their  houses  invaded  and  searched,  and  some  of  them  shot.  The 
press  tells  very  little  of  this. 

Question:  The  Government  jnakes  a  distinction  betweeii  the  persecution 
of  religion  and  the  persecution  of  the  Hierarchy  for  reasons  which  are  their 
own.  Do  the  Bishops  recognize  any  such  distinction? 

Answer:  No  such  distinction  is  possible;  the  persecution  of  the  Hierarchy 
necessarily  implies  persecution  of  religion  since  the  people  suffer  from  the  lack 
of  a  free  hierarchy. 

Question  :  How  are  funds  collected  at  present  and  what  is  done  with 
them? 

Answer:  At  present  the  faithful  naturally  give  very  few  alms  in  the 
churches  and  these  are  given  with  the  object  of  providing  for  the  necessary 
•care  of  the  churches.  These  little  funds  are  administered  by  local  vestries 
Dr  trustees  at  present  in  care  of  the  churches. 

Question  :  Has  the  Church  a  paper  or  organ  with  which  it  keeps  in  touch 
with  the  faithful? 

Answer:  Most  of  the  Catholic  newspapers  have  been  suppressed  and  the 
few  that  still  remain  encounter  great  difficulties  because  the  Constitution 
prohibits  periodicals,  or  periodicals  favorable  to  any  religion,  from  criticising 
the  authorities  and  the  laws.  The  projected  legislation  of  General  Calles 
embraces  among  such  publications  even  loose-leaves,  prints,  photographs,  holy 
pictures,  etc. 

Question:  fVhat  about  the  boycott? 

Answer:  In  regard  to  the  boycott,  the  Committee  of  Bishops  has  limited 
itself  to  declaring  that  the  said  boycott  is  lawful  and  efficacious  toward  the 
end  for  which  it  was  proclaimed  by  the  League  of  Defense  of  Religious 
Liberty. 

Question  :  JVhat  is  the  attitude  of  the  Catholic  laity  toward  the  present 
situation  (the  boycott)? 

Answerg  The  Catholic  public  approves  and  applauds  the  attitude  of  the 
Bishops  and,  although  it  be  with  deep  regret,  the  suspension  of  worship  in 
the  churches  is  endured  with  resignation  and  patience  in  the  hope  of  thereby 
finally  recovering  religious  liberty ;  and  when  there  has  been  some  indication 
of  concessions,  without  first  securing  the  reform  of  the  Constitution,  there 
has  been  great  alarm  among  the  Catholics  and  these  have  implored  the 
Bishops  not  to  yield  until  full  religious  liberty  be  attained. 

Question  :  Is  it  not  possible  that  the  action  of  the  Hierarchy  in  with¬ 
drawing  the  priests  from  the  churches  may  react  upon  the  Church  and,  what 
is  more  important,  upon  religion  in  general,  in  this  way: — the  communicants 
may  become  accustomed  to  proceed  through  life,  as  one  man  actually  said  to 
me,  without  priestly  assistance?  This  man  said  to  me,  “The  priests  were 
withdrawn  and  the  world  went  on,  and  we  got  our  three  meals  a  day  and  no 
cataclysm  camel" 

Answer:  The  first  reply  is  that  the  decision  to  withdraw  the  priests  was 
reached  not  as  a  matter  of  caprice  but  in  obedience  to  a  mandate  of  con¬ 
science  that  the  Church  could  not  do  otherwise.  The  Pope  himself  author¬ 
ized  and  even  instructed  us  to  maintain  that  attitude  so  that  whatever  the 
consequences  we  will  have  to  abide  by  them.  The  Church  trusts  that  as 
soon  as  liberty  is  restored  it  will  regain  whatever  it  may  have  lost. 

A  further  reply,  which  is  extremely  important,  is  that  the  situation  in  the 
City  of  Mexico  and  other  large  places  where  there  are  all  sorts  of  diversions, 


38 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


vice  and  even  evidences  of  loose  living  among  the  people  is  different  to  that 
in  the  other  parts  of  the  country  and  that  while  in  some  of  the  big  cities  the 
Church  may  lose  its  hold  on  some  of  its  people,  in  the  country  districts  the 
people  are  performing  acts  of  penance,  praying  to  God  that  this  state  of 
affairs  may  pass.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  Morelos,  the  religious  fervor  is 
much  greater  now  than  it  was  before  and  that  there  are  more  communicants 
attending  mass  now  even  though  to  do  so  means  danger  of  persecution  by 
the  Government. 

Question  :  What  is  the  Church’s  attitude  toivard  the  Government’ s  pro¬ 
gram  of  education? 

Answer:  The  Catholic  Church  in  no  wise  opposes  the  development  by  the 
Government  of  its  program  of  popular  education,  provided  only  that  religion 
be  not  prejudiced  or  persecuted,  and  provided  that  the  Catholic  moral  code 
be  not  violated,  which  unfortunately  has  been  the  case,  and  continues  to  be 
the  case  in  many  public  schools  by  the  diffusion  of  socialistic  doctrines. 

Question:  We  are  often  told  that  the  leadership  of  the  Church  in  Mex¬ 
ico  is  in  the  hands  of  those  who  come  from  abroad  to  help  here.  To  what 
extent  is  this  true? 

Answer:  Among  the  Bishops,  not  one  single  bishop  is  of  foreign  birth.  All 
are  Mexicans.  Of  the  5,000  priests,  only  about  500  are  foreigners. 

(Closing  Remarks  by  Mr.  Landman) 

Is  it  not  possible  that  this  unique  gathering  presages  that  time  of  better 
understanding  and  good-will  between  religions  and  nations  for  which  we  all 
hope?  Here  in  the  palace  of  a  bishop  of  the  Roman  Church,  Protestant, 
Catholic  and  Jew  are  seeking  to  understand  each  other  so  that  as  a  result  of 
the  truth,  the  world  may  be  made  a  little  better  and  happier.  Ours  has  not 
been  a  theological  controversy.  We  have  not  split  hairs  on  credal  differ¬ 
ences.  We  have  not  indulged  in  casuistry.  We  have  tried  to  understand  and 
I  believe  we  have  succeeded  in  understanding  each  other’s  point  of  view  that 
we  may  disseminate  it  truthfully  to  our  fellows. 

In  that,  it  seems  to  me,  lies  the  significance  of  our  American  pilgrimage  to 
Mexico.  In  that  is  centered  the  uniqueness  of  this  presence.  In  behalf  of  my 
colleagues  and  myself,  I  express  the  hope,  I  offer  the  prayer,  that  the  evils 
which  beset  your  country  may  soon  end ;  that  the  differences  between  your 
Church  and  your  Government  may  soon  be  reconciled  in  justice  and  amity; 
that  a  better  understanding  between  the  warring  factions  in  Mexico  may 
soon  bring  to  it  the  peace  so  long  delayed  that,  under  God,  all  religions  and 
nations  may  soon  unite  and  work  together  in  harmony  and  love  toward  the 
building  of  a  better  world. 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


39 


Interview  with  President  Plutarco  Elias  Calles 
AT  His  Office  in  the  National  Palace,  on  the 
Morning  of  January  8,  1927,  Roberto 
Haberman,  Interpreter 

Mr.  HERRING:  Mr.  President,  this  group  of  forty  citizens  of  the 
United  States  of  America  have  spent  ten  delightful  days  in  your 
republic.  We  have  been  received  with  courtesy  and  frankness  by 
representatives  of  all  the  phases  of  your  nation’s  life.  We  have  sought  to 
learn  of  the  problems  with  which  your  government  so  courageously  grapples. 
We  have  sought  to  understand  Mexico  in  human  terms.  We  have  sought 
to  envisage  the  sufferings  and  the  struggles  of  your  people,  and  to  know 
something  of  the  rebirth  of  national  pride  which  is  today  sweeping  across 
Mexico.  We  have  witnessed  the  variety  and  the  beauty  of  your  land,  and 
have  learned  to  appreciate  the  spiritual  appeal  of  Mexican  culture.  We  take 
back  to  the  United  States  of  America  these  things  which  we  have  learned. 
We  are  all  richer  because  of  our  visit.  W^e  shall  seek  to  share  that  which 
you  have  given  to  us  with  the  people  of  our  nation. 

We  leave  Mexico  with  a  profound  sense  of  the  advantage  which  will 
accrue  to  the  people  of  North  America  if  the  day  of  exploitation  gives  way 
to  a  new  spirit  of  willingness  to  share  life  and  culture.  I  am  sure  that  I 
speak  for  every  member  of  this  group  when  I  say  that  the  people  of  our 
country  need  that  which  you  have.  I  do  not  refer  to  your  land  or  your  oil 
or  your  minerals.  These  belong  to  you.  I  refer  to  the  wealth  of  ethnic  and 
historical  background,  and  the  spiritual  culture  which  undergirds  your 
nation.  These  we  would  like  to  share.  These  we  have  the  right  to  share. 
We  return  to  our  homes  to  tell  our  neighbors  about  these  things.  And  we 
shall  come  again  and  again,  if  you  will  permit  us,  and  each  time  we  will 
take  away  that  wealth  which,  without  robbing  Mexico,  will  enrich  us  all. 

Mr.  Calles:  You  cannot  imagine,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  how  happy  I  am 
that  so  characteristic  and  distinguished  a  committee  from  the  United  States 
should  visit  us  at  this  time.  I  am  still  more  pleased  to  receive  this  visit 
because  the  members  which  make  up  this  committee  and  the  words  which  I 
have  just  heard  show  that  they  have  an  ample  understanding  and  are  of  a 
sane  and  wholesome  spirit.  It  is  very  rarely  that  we  have  the  opportunity 
of  hearing  words  of  so  much  spirituality  as  those  which  I  have  just  heard. 
In  general  we  are  always  hearing  the  brusque  and  often  brutal  terms  in 
which  material  interests  are  discussed.  Therefore,  when  we  hear  words  that 
bring  with  them  concepts  of  justice,  words  of  brotherliness,  it  makes  us  dare 
to  hope  that  the  time  may  not  be  distant  when  there  will  be  established  a 
truly  equitable  relationship  between  our  peoples.  I  have  the  firm  conviction 
that  as  long  as  nations  fight  for  the  conquest  of  material  things,  forgetting 
the  spiritual  values  of  humanity,  the  peace  of  the  world  must  be  a  He. 
Therefore,  I  feel  comforted  by  the  words  that  I  have  just  heard  because  they 
make  me  realize  that  there  are  still  good  people  in  the  world  that  are  working 
for  the  establishment  of  harmony  between  peoples  on  the  basis  of  justice  and 
morality. 


40 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


I  am  also  happy  to  know  that  this  committee  has  been  well  received  every¬ 
where.  It  could  not  have  been  otherwise  because  this  committee  does  not 
bring  with  it  any  egoistic  goal ;  you  do  not  come  here  because  you  have  any 
material  interests  and  I  have  the  absolute  certainty  that  you  will  know  how 
to  form  clear  concepts  of  our  situation  and  that  you  will  know  how  to  dc 
us  justice  in  these  moments  that  are  so  critical  for  Mexico. 

You  are  very  welcome  in  my  country  and  you  will  be  equally  well  received 
every  time  that  you  come  here.  We  have  our  arms  open  for  all  those  of 
good  faith. 

If  you  want  to  have  an  exchange  of  views  with  me  about  the  situation  in 
my  country,  the  problems  which  we  are  facing  and  about  our  intentions,  I 
am  at  your  service.  You  may  have  the  absolute  certainty  that  from  me  you 
will  have  only  words  of  truth  and  sincerity. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  one  member  of  the  party  wishes  to  ask  this 
question:  How  far  would  the  withdrawal  of  recognition  by  the  Unitedf 
States  frustrate  the  aims  of  your  Government  and  provoke  counter  revolu¬ 
tion  in  Mexico? 

Mr.  Calles:  Without  any  doubt  that  is  what  would  happen.  The 
enemies  of  the  Government  (which  we  could  at  this  time  classify  in  three 
groups — the  Roman  Catholic  clergy,  some  of  the  political  elements  and  some 
of  the  reactionary  forces)  would  see,  in  the  case  of  the  severing  of  relations 
with  the  United  States,  an  opportunity  to  interfere  and  they  would  also  pre¬ 
tend  to  see  a  help  to  their  rebel  activities  against  this  Government.  Even 
now  there  are  fanatical  elements  backed  to  rebellion  by  the  clergy,  in  arms 
within  the  Republic,  but  the  Government  is  pursuing  and  punishing  these 
rebels.  The  lamentable  part  of  this  situation  is  that  those  who  are  driven 
to  rebellion  are  ignorant  people  and  that  those  who  are  truly  responsible 
always  remain  hidden  in  their  homes.  Political  refugees  in  the  United 
States  are  also  agitating  against  the  Government,  trying  to  find  war  materials 
so  that  they  may  come  here  and  disturb  the  existing  order  of  the  country. 
1  can  tell  you  with  all  sincerity  that  the  Government  of  the  Republic  finds 
itself  in  position  to  dominate  whatever  disturbances  may  occur  in  the  in¬ 
terior  of  the  Republic. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  we  are  all  much  interested  in  the  Nicara¬ 
guan  question.  JV e  would  appreciate  any  word  you  might  say  about  this. 

Mr.  Calles:  With  great  pleasure.  The  Government  of  Mexico  has 
different  criterions  than  those  of  the  United  States,  for  the  legal  and  moral 
reasons  which  I  am  going  to  explain  to  you.  After  many  years  of  tyranny 
in  Nicaragua,  a  tyranny  personified  in  the  families  of  Chamorro  and  Adolfo 
Diaz,  there  was  established  in  that  country  a  constitutional  government  born 
of  a  popular  election.  This  government  was  represented  by  President  Solor- 
zano  and  Vice-President  Sacasa,  and  all  the  other  powers  of  the  government 
were  constituted  legally.  This  government  of  Nicaragua  was  performing 
its  acts  in  perfect  tranquility  and  was  making  efforts  to  bring  about  a  better¬ 
ment  in  the  conditions  of  the  country.  But  one  of  the  old  dictators  of 
Nicaragua,  Emiliano  Chamorro,  created  a  coup  d’etat  and  through  violence 
overthrew  the  government  of  Solorzano.  The  people  of  Nicaragua  could 
not  remain  satisfied  with  this  situation,  this  state  of  violence,  and  threw 
themselves  into  the  fight  under  the  leadership  of  Vice-President  Sacasa,  who 
represented  legality  in  Nicaragua.  Two  governments  were  established,  the 
government  of  violence  and  the  government  of  legality.  Mexico  recognizes 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


41 


the  government  of  legality.  This  is  our  position  with  respect  to  the  situa¬ 
tion  in  Nicaragua. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  what  are  the  provisions  of  the  treaty  of 
Guadalupe  Hidalgo  providing  against  future  armed  conflict  between  Mexico 
and  the  United  States,  and  the  bearing  of  these  provisions  on  the  present 
situation  with  the  United  States? 

Mr.  Calles  :  I  would  have  to  have  the  whole  treaty  before  me  in  order 
to  correctly  answer  this  question.  This  question  should  really  be  asked  the 
Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  is  Mexico  willing  to  submit  the  difficulties 
arising  out  of  the  Mexican  land  and  oil  laws  to  the  Hague  or  some  other 
international  tribunal? 

Mr.  Calles:  If  necessary,  Mexico  would  follow  such  a  course.  How¬ 
ever,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  sovereignty  of  nations  this  would  include 
a  peril,  in  the  precedence  that  would  be  established.  If  a  country,  exercising 
its  sovereignty  passes  laws,  laws  which  the  nation  believes  are  necessary  for 
the  well-being  of  the  people,  it  is  very  dangerous  for  it  to  submit  these  laws 
to  the  wishes  of  other  people.  And  it  is  also  very  dangerous  for  it  to  submit 
these  questions  to  tribunals  of  arbitration  because,  from  very  painful  experi¬ 
ence,  we  know — and  history  shows  it  in  all  clarity — that  in  all  these  inter¬ 
national  courts  it  is  always  the  point  of  view  of  the  strong  that  dominates. 
But  if  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  sacrifice  to  prevent  much  more  serious  diffi¬ 
culties  for  the  country,  we  would  be  willing  to  do  this,  taking  our  chances 
with  the  danger.  Of  two  evils,  it  is  always  better  to  choose  the  less. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  in  the  present  international  situation  exist¬ 
ing  between  the  United  States  and  Mexico,  what  is  the  request  which  Mexico 
would  make  on  public  opinion  in  the  United  States,  what — if  you  were 
speaking  to  all  America — would  you  say? 

Mr.  Calles:  That  Mexico  can  demonstrate  with  the  clarity  of  sunlight 
that  in  the  present  situation  all  justice  is  on  its  side,  that  the  present  difficul¬ 
ties  are  not  between  the  peoples  of  the  United  States  and  the  peoples  of 
Mexico,  but  between  the  just  laws  of  Mexico  and  a  small  group  of  Ameri¬ 
can  capitalists  who  have  tried  to  influence  their  Department  of  State  so  that 
they  might  obtain  the  help  of  force.  The  difficulties  are  not  of  a  moral 
kind,  they  haven’t  a  single  fundamental  characteristic  in  which  the  honor  or 
dignity  of  the  countries  are  affected  nor  are  there  any  offenses  against  either 
of  the  countries.  The  difficulty  is  oil,  but  it  is  an  abstract  and  fictitious 
difficulty  because  the  legislation  which  they  are  discussing  and  to  which  they 
have  not  wanted  to  submit  does  not  hurt  in  the  least  the  petroleum  industry 
or  the  petroleum  interests.  I  say  that  it  is  an  abstract  question  because  the 
point  on  which  they  are  basing  their  attempt  to  put  themselves  above  the  law 
is  the  old  Roman  concept  of  the  absolute  right  of  property.  Our  legislation 
confirms  and  recognizes  the  rights  over  the  sub-soil  acquired  before  the 
Constitution  of  1917,  for  a  term  of  fifty  years,  and  when  this  term  is  ended 
should  there  still  be  petroleum  exploitation  the  owners  of  such  property  can 
get  an  extension  of  thirty  years  more.  In  other  words,  we  have  recognized 
the  sub-soil  rights  for  eighty  years.  I  would  like  to  ask  any  one  of  you 
gentlemen  if  you  have  knowledge  of  any  oil  well  that  has  functioned  for 
eighty  years?  The  oil  men  say  that  we  are  restricting  their  property  rights 
in  the  matter  of  time,  and  they  are  engaged  in  an  abstract  discussion  about 
something  that  is  going  to  happen  eighty  years  from  now.  Why,  at  that  time 


42 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


the  organization  of  human  society  might  be  completely  changed!  Existing 
institutions  are  being  changed  right  along  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  the 
rights  of  property  may  in  the  course  of  such  a  period  be  given  an  entirely 
different  interpretation  by  society.  I  believe  that  the  term  of  eighty  years 
which  has  been  given  is  more  than  sufficient. 

That  is  the  fundamental  issue,  and  not  before  the  law  or  in  the  light  of 
morality  can  these  people  sustain  the  points  which  they  are  discussing.  I 
believe  that  the  industrialist  who  devotes  himself  to  his  work  is  content  to 
take  his  due  profit  from  his  work  and  is  not  interested  in  abstract  principles. 
The  laws  make  it  possible  for  such  people  to  work  without  any  kind  of 
obstacle — they  can  enjoy  the  fruits  of  their  labor.  The  eighty-year  period 
has  been  demonstrated  scientifically  as  sufficient  for  oil  exploitation. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  does  Mexico  recognize  the  right  of  any 
foreign  government  to  protect  the  property  rights  of  any  foreign  citizen  in 
this  country? 

Mr.  Calles  :  The  only  right  which  exists,  apart  from  that  recognized  by 
international  law  and  existing  treaties,  is  the  right  of  force  and  no  community 
recognizes  that.  For  the  defense  of  interests,  whether  national  or  foreign, 
the  laws  of  the  country  indicate  the  recourse  to  be  followed  and  only  in  the 
case  of  a  negation  of  justice  has  a  foreign  government  the  right  to  make 
representation  before  ours.  I  believe  that  this  is  the  procedure  the  world 
over.  Our  tribunal  and  courts  are  ready  to  hear  and  to  decide  all  cases  which 
are  brought  before  them. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  in  regard  to  the  Church  situation  in  which 
we  are  all  interested,  we  would  like  to  ask  whether  the  present  attitude  of 
the  Mexican  Government  is  anti-religious  and  zuhether  the  present  attitude 
of  the  Mexican  Government  is  weakening  the  religious  faith  of  the  people, 
and  whether  the  people  distinguish  between  conflict  with  the  Hierarchy  and 
conflict  with  religion? 

Mr.  Calles  :  This  Government  is  not  against  religion  nor  against  any  one 
religion — for  us  all  religions  are  good.  What  we  have  been  opposed  to  here 
is  not  religion  but  the  high  dignitaries  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  who 
have  not  wanted  to  submit  themselves  to  our  laws ;  laws  which  do  not  in  the 
least  affect  dogma  or  beliefs.  The  clergy  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in 
all  Latin  American  countries  has  constituted  itself  as  a  power  superior  to 
that  of  the  State  and  has  always  aimed  at  temporal  power.  It  has  not  limited 
itself  to  its  mission,  it  has  invaded  the  spheres  of  politics,  it  has  organized  and 
conducted  internal  wars.  In  sober  truth  it  has  been  the  greatest  handicap 
and  incubus  of  these  countries.  I  don’t  know  whether  there  are  any  Catho¬ 
lics  here  at  present  but  these  things  are  the  truth.  This  is  true  also,  that  the 
effect  of  the  Catholic  clergy  on  the  mass  of  the  people  has  been  sinister.  One 
of  the  goals  of  the  clergy  has  been  to  keep  the  people  in  ignorance.  They 
have  been  the  principal  contributors  toward  the  slavery  of  the  people  and  in 
this  country  there  has  always  been  seen  a  clergy  united  with  all  the  ex¬ 
ploiters,  particularly  the  clergy'  united  with  the  landlord  who  exploited  the 
peon.  The  clergy'  have  not  made  the  most  insignificant  effort  to  even  try 
to  liberate  the  people  from  vices.  What  the  Government  has  tried  to  do  is 
to  define  the  two  camps,  to  limit  the  clergy  to  its  proper  sphere  of  religion  and 
to  leave  the  State  free  to  exercise  its  functions.  And  to  this,  the  clergy 
opposes  itself.  Everything  else  that  they  tell  you  is  not  so. 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


43 


Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President ,  the  Roman  Catholics  claim  that  during  the 
past  years  the  Church  has  done  a  great  deal  for  the  welfare  of  the  Mexican 
people,  establishing  schools,  alms-houses,  orphanages,  hospitals  and  similar 
institutions  of  mercy ;  that  this  should  justify  leaving  these  institutions  in  the 
hands  of  the  Church.  What  is  the  Government s  feeling  with  regard  to  this? 

Mr.  Calles  :  The  answer  to  this  can  be  given  with  palpable  facts,  not 
words.  If  the  Church  had  done  the  work  of  education  of  which  it  speaks 
our  people  would  not  find  themselves  in  the  sad  condition  in  which  they  are 
today.  It  is  not  true  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  had  schools  to 
teach  the  disinherited.  What  they  did  establish  were  lots  of  little  schools 
and  convents  to  exploit  the  rich.  To  these  the  poor  never  went.  There  only 
the  daughters  of  the  rich  went  so  that  the  Church  could  extract  from  them  all 
the  money  that  they  could.  They  went  about  this  with  great  directness  and 
crudity.  And  more  than  this,  the  women  who  entered  these  institutions  were 
often  prostituted,  to  their  shame. 

Where  are  the  elementary  or  primary  or  rural  schools  of  the  Catholic 
Church?  I  wish  they  would  show  them  to  me.  Where  are  their  hospitals? 
I  do  not  know  them.  In  the  large  cities,  in  the  capitals,  there  were  one  or 
two  foundations  of  charity  which  maintained  themselves  with  some  funds 
which  were  left  to  them  by  some  rich  persons,  but  outside  of  these  hospitals 
maintained  with  these  funds  and  administered  by  some  clergymen,  there  were 
no  other  church  institutions  of  this  nature.  And  these  places  were  generally 
in  a  miserable  condition  because  often  the  money  that  had  been  left  to  them 
was  diverted  into  other  channels.  But  their  whole  social  work  was  so  small 
and  insignificant  that  it  isn’t  worth  talking  about  it.  You  are  here  in  this 
capital  of  the  Republic,  the  first  city  of  the  land.  I  beg  you  to  please  go 
and  find  out  where  are  the  hospitals,  orphanages,  etc.,  that  were  maintained 
by  the  Church.  Please  try  to  find  them. 

Mr.  Herring:  The  claim  made  by  the  Hierarchy  that  the  present  condi¬ 
tion  as  described  by  the  President  is  due  to  the  fact  that  since  1857  the 
Government  has  constantly  interfered  with  them  and  made  it  impossible  for 
them  to  carry  out  their  work. 

Mr.  Calles:  They  never  had  any  social  program — never.  We  would 
like  to  know  what  their  social  program  was  before  ’57.  The  landowners 
enslaved  the  Indians — and  the  Church  upheld  the  landowner.  I  don’t  know 
of  any  social  work  that  they  have  ever  done.  To  gather  and  to  monopolize 
the  wealth  of  the  country,  to  be  owners  of  the  largest  part  of  the  territory 
of  the  Republic,  to  be  the  owners  of  large  city  properties,  to  engage  in  the 
exploitation  of  the  peasants,  always  trying  to  have  in  their  hands  the  national 
wealth  of  Mexico  so  as  to  have  supreme  power — that  was  their  social  pro¬ 
gram. 

Mr.  Herring:  Is  not  the  denial  of  civil  rights  to  priests  a  denial  of  re¬ 
ligious  liberty? 

Mr.  Calles:  In  matters  religious  they  have  absolute  and  complete  liberty. 
I  am  going  to  tell  you  the  point  of  conflict  so  that  you  can  judge  for  your¬ 
selves.  What  started  the  present  conflict?  An  order  was  issued  by  the 
Government  that  every  priest  in  charge  of  a  temple  should  register  with  the 
municipality  so  that  we  might  know  who  was  in  charge  of  that  temple.  How 
much  less  could  this  Government  ask  of  them  when  the  temples  are  con¬ 
sidered  as  the  property  of  the  nation  ? 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  the  Church  says  it  is  willing  to  give  up 


44 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


interest  in  every  way  in  all  its  properties  in  order  that  it  may  have  the  right 
to  those  buildings  necessary  for  the  carrying  on  of  its  religious  work. 

Mr.  Calles  :  The  Government  has  not  taken  away  the  right  to  carry  on 
religious  work.  This  contention  of  the  Church  is  a  sophism.  You  may  go  all 
over  the  city  and  visit  all  the  temples  and  you  will  be  decidedly  convinced 
that  the  churches,  the  temples,  are  open  to  the  people  and  that  they  have  not 
been  debarred  from  fulfilling  their  religious  functions.  The  only  thing  that 
happened  here  is  that  the  priests  declared  a  strike. 

Mr.  Herring:  A  high  official  of  the  Church  says  that  in  1857  there  was 
less  illiteracy  here  than  in  England  and  that  the  present  condition  is  due  to 
the  Government’ s  action  since  then.  Is  this  in  any  sense  true? 

Mr.  Calles  :  This  is  something  that  is  so  palpably  stupid  that  it  cannot 
be  answered.  We  have  statistical  data  in  the  Department  of  Education  and 
there  you  can  get  all  the  information  that  you  may  want. 

Mr.  Herring:  The  assertion  is  made  that  the  lands  that  have  been  divided 
among  the  Indians  have  not  been  paid  for. 

Mr.  Calles  :  They  are  being  paid  for.  At  this  very  moment  they  are 
having  a  drawing  made  of  the  bonds  for  repayment  of  the  lands  ex-propriated. 
I  cannot  now  give  you  a  history  of  the  land  situation  in  Mexico,  but  it  is 
very  necessary  for  you  to  know  this  so  that  you  will  have  a  clearer  under¬ 
standing  of  what  the  Government  is  doing.  You  must  understand  that  in  a 
nation  like  Mexico  with  a  territory  so  large  and  a  population  so  small  it 
would  be  both  ridiculous  and  menacing  to  the  prosperity  of  the  country  for 
all  the  territory  to  be  in  the  hands  of  a  hundred  or  so  landowners.  As  you 
must  know,  gentlemen,  we  had  here  in  Mexico  men  who  owned  vast  tracts 
of  land.  For  example,  Terasas,  in  Chihuahua,  owned  two  million  hectares 
[hectare :  two  and  one-half  acres]  of  land.  Do  you  think  it  is  possible  for  a 
person  to  put  in  cultivation  two  million  hectares  of  land  ?  [That  is  about 
five  million  acres.]  The  holding  of  lands  in  this  monopolistic  fashion  was 
most  dangerous  and  the  decision  of  the  Government  was  for  these  proper¬ 
ties  to  be  divided,  so  that  they  be  made  to  produce  and  at  the  same  time  benefit 
the  community.  To  effect  this  principle  we  had  to  have  agricultural  legis¬ 
lation. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  in  regard  to  immigration — would  it  be 
agreeable  to  the  Mexican  Government  to  have  the  present  quota  law  of  the 
United  States  applied  to  Mexico? 

Mr.  Calles:  I  believe  that  would  be  a  great  benefit  to  us.  The  Govern¬ 
ment  of  Mexico  is  making  all  possible  efforts  to  develop  its  country  and  to 
keep  its  nationals  here,  and  not  only  that  but  to  be  able  to  receive  immigra¬ 
tion  that  is  willing  to  come  and  cooperate  with  us. 

Mr.  Herring:  Would  a  general  immigration  establish  a  new  middle  class 
in  Mexico? 

Mr.  Calles:  Yes,  I  believe  so.  We  are  studying  this  problem  with  all 
seriousness.  The  Government  is  carrying  on  now  a  program  of  irrigation. 
We  have  devoted  twenty  million  pesos  a  year  out  of  our  budget  to  this  work. 
The  main  problem  of  Mexico  with  regard  to  agriculture  is  immigration.  We 
hope  to  bring  irrigation  each  year  to  about  200,000  more  hectares.  [That 
is  about  500,000  acres  of  land.]  With  the  development  of  this  plan  we  will 
soon  have  lands  in  such  condition  for  cultivation  that  not  only  our  own 
people  will  be  able  to  use  them  but  also  the  foreigners.  We  are  now 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


45 


making  a  serious  study  of  an  immigration  which  would  give  the  country  the 
benefits  which  we  are  looking  for. 

Mr.  Herring:  Mr.  President,  one  last  question.  TVe  would  like  to  ask 
to  what  extent  do  you  look  upon  this  present  movement  in  Mexico  as  a 
unique  and  new  experiment  in  social  systems — or  is  it  merely  a  change  in 
administration  f 

Mr.  Calles:  This  is  absolutely  permanent.  Whatever  government  may 
come  in  this  country  in  the  future  which  does  not  attend  to  the  aspirations 
of  the  people — which  are  of  bettering  themselves — that  government  will  not 
be  able  to  maintain  itself.  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
revolutionary  movement  in  this  country  is  not  an  anarchistic  movement  as 
some  people  are  trying  to  represent  it.  This  is  a  movement  which  is  entirely 
original,  which  is  being  developed  step  by  step  and  in  accordance  with  the 
environment  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  It  is  growing  point  by  point  and 
not  through  acts  of  violence,  as  is  being  represented  by  various  people.  If 
anybody  asks  us  what  school  or  doctrine  we  follow,  I  could  not  point  to  any 
one  of  the  scientific  theories  which  are  well  known.  We  are  proceeding  in 
accordance  with  our  own  needs  and  with  our  own  experience.  We  are  called 
Bolshevistic,  but  if  anyone  should  ask  us  what  Bolshevism  is,  I  don’t  think 
we  could  answer. 

Mr.  Herring:  We  are  very  grateful  to  you  for  your  frankness  and  the 
time  which  you  have  given  us. 

Mr.  Calles:  You  are  in  your  own  home! 


46 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Address  by  Dr.  Alfonso  Pruneda,  Rector  of 
THE  University  of  Mexico 

IT  IS  very  difficult  to  express  myself  clearly  in  English.  We  speak  Eng¬ 
lish  here  so  seldom — about  once  very  twelve  months.  I  have  been  asked 
to  tell  you  something  about  the  University  of  Mexico.  The  University 
of  Mexico  is  the  oldest  university  in  Mexico.  It  was  founded  in  the  16th 
Century  and  is  as  old  as  the  University  of  Lisbon.  The  University  lived 
throughout  the  Spanish  domination  of  Mexico  until  some  time  ago,  when  it 
was  closed  down  because  of  political  difficulties  between  the  liberals  and  non¬ 
liberals;  but  in  1910  it  was  reestablished  as  the  National  University  of  Mex¬ 
ico  and  now  it  is  trying  to  reconstruct  the  National  spirit,  to  establish  friendly 
relations  between  various  interests  and  to  serve  the  people. 

The  University  is  at  present  composed  of  the  Faculties  of  Jurisprudence, 
Chemistry  and  Pharmacy,  Medicine,  Engineering,  Dentistry,  and  Philosophy 
and  Letters,  the  National  Preparatory  School  and  the  School  of  Mus  e,  Fine 
Arts  and  Public  Administration,  as  well  as  the  Summer  and  Winter  Schools. 
The  administrative  unity  of  the  University  is  maintained  by  the  General 
Secretaryship,  and  its  technical  unity  by  the  Rector  and  Secretary  General, 
Directors  of  the  Faculties,  Delegates  of  the  professors  and  students  of  the 
same,  and  Delegates  from  the  Federal  Department  of  Education,  from  the 
Federation  of  Students  and  from  the  Schools  of  Fine  Arts  and  Music. 

The  Faculty  of  Chemistry  and  Pharmacy  has  also  a  Practical  School  of 
Chemical  Industries  attached  to  it,  and  the  Faculty  of  Engineering  has  a 
very  important  School  of  Mines  near  Mexico  City.  The  Faculty  of  Philos¬ 
ophy  and  Letters  has  the  Graduate  School  and  Higher  Normal  School  with 
the  object  of  improving  the  knowledge  acquired  in  the  other  Faculties,  by 
means  of  courses  of  professional  specialization,  and  the  preparation  of  teach¬ 
ers  for  the  Secondary,  Preparatory  and  Normal  Schools.  This  Faculty 
awards  the  three  University  degrees  of  Professor,  Master  and  Doctor.  The 
general  organization  of  the  educational  system  in  Mexico  consists  of  six  years 
of  primary  schooling,  three  of  secondary,  two  of  preparatory  for  the  Uni¬ 
versity  Faculties,  and  three  to  six  in  the  various  Faculties. 

The  work  of  the  various  faculties  is  directly  practical.  In  addition  to  the 
practical  School  of  Mines  and  School  of  Chemical  Industries  where  the 
students  are  men  engaged  in  these  lines  of  work,  I  must  mention  the  School 
of  Public  Administration,  where  officers  of  the  Government  come  to  the 
school  at  night.  The  extension  of  the  University’s  work  in  large  factories 
is  also  considerable ;  it  is  being  carried  on  in  several  parts  of  the  country. 
The  Summer  School  is  very  widespread  in  its  influence.  There  come  to  it 
many  students  from  the  United  States  of  America,  as  well  as  students  from 
Mexico,  and  we  feel  that  the  work  of  the  Summer  School  is  one  of  the  most 
valuable  factors  in  establishing  friendly  relations  between  the  two  nations. 

I  trust  that  this  meager  outline  will  suffice  to  give  you  an  idea  of  the  main 
work  of  the  University.  Probably  there  are  many  questions  you  would  like 
to  ask  me,  all  of  which  I  shall  be  glad  to  answer. 

Question:  IVill  you  tell  us  something  of  the  Federal  Government' s  part 
in  establishing  other  schools? 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


47 


Answer:  A  few  years  ago  a  federal  law  was  passed  giving  to  the  Federal 
Government  the  right  to  go  into  any  state  and  build  there  schools  of  any 
kind  under  direct  control  of  the  Federal  Government.  The  idea  of  this 
movement  was  to  extend  the  power  of  the  Federal  Government  in  building 
rural  schools  and  other  schools  where  the  state  governments  were  too  poor 
to  build  them.  Therefore  we  have  a  certain  kind  of  Federal  education, 
operative  mostly  in  the  rural  schools ;  outside  of  the  system  of  education  for 
the  state.  The  Federal  Government  has  opened  about  three  thousand 
schools  all  over  the  country,  thus  helping  the  local  state  governments  in  the 
work  of  education.  Besides,  we  have  industrial  schools  directed  by  the  Min¬ 
ister  of  Education ;  we  have  technical,  electrical  and  mechanical  engineering 
schools  and  all  kinds  of  agricultural  schools  for  the  rural  districts. 

Question:  Are  there  any  other  universities  in  Mexico  other  than  thisf 

Answer:  There  is  a  University  in  Yucatan  and  one  in  the  state  of  Morelos 
and  two  other  universities,  but  really  most  of  the  students  come  here  to  Mex¬ 
ico  City  because  none  of  the  other  universities  have  the  advantages  that  are 
here.  This  is  the  National  University.  We  have  an  enrollment  here  of 
about  10,000  students. 

Question:  Are  those  universities  like  our  state  universities? 

Answer:  Yes.  They  belong  to  the  respective  states. 

Question:  What  was  the  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  that  law  em¬ 
powering  the  Federal  authorities  to  establish  schools  in  various  districts?  Did 
they  favor  or  oppose  it? 

Answer:  They  were  entirely  indifferent  to  that  law  because  the  schools 
were  mostly  in  the  rural  villages  where  formerly  there  were  absolutely  no 
schools  of  any  kind.  It  is  true  that  in  some  villages,  not  exactly  the  Church 
but  the  local  priest,  opposed  the  schools  and  preached  against  them  because 
the  schools  were  putting  new  ideas  into  the  heads  of  the  people.  In  Hidalgo, 
for  instance,  some  women  after  leaving  church,  once,  went  around  to  the 
schools  and  tried  to  put  out  the  teachers.  But  such  reactions  were  all  local 
and  unimportant. 

Question:  Can  you  tell  us  about  the  exchange  system  with  schools  in  the 
United  States? 

Answer:  There  are  plans  for  exchanging  professors  with  certain  univer¬ 
sities  but  unfortunately  the  plans  are  not  as  well  organized  as  in  European 
countries.  France  has  sent  here  three  professors  who  give  lectures  here. 
Spain,  last  month,  sent  two  professors  on  exchanges.  From  the  States  we 
had  Dr.  Dewey  lecturing  in  this  same  room  recently.  There  are  two  pro¬ 
fessors  here  from  Italy.  But  we  are  anxious  to  have  a  regular  exchange  of 
professors  with  certain  universities  in  the  United  States,  although  they  want 
us  to  talk  English  and  want  to  come  and  talk  English  here.  This,  it  seems 
is  hardly  fair.  If  our  professors  are  to  talk  English  there,  yours  should  talk 
Spanish  here. 

Question  :  Is  education  compulsory  here? 

Answer:  The  first  four  years  are  compulsory,  but  because  of  the  lack  of 
schools,  we  cannot  enforce  the  law.  The  law  is,  however,  that  everybody 
should  have  four  years  of  schooling. 

Question:  Is  there  anything  in  the  way  of  Teaching  Fellowships  for* 
advanced  students  coming  here  to  study  and  at  the  same  time  tutor  in  Eng¬ 
lish  ? 


48 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Answer:  It  would  be  very  good  to  have  something  like  that  but  we  have 
no  regular  arrangements  at  present.  We  have  three  or  four  American  stu¬ 
dents  here  now,  and  two  or  three  have  obtained  degrees. 

Question  :  IVhat  is  the  present  attitude  of  the  people  in  the  rural  dis¬ 
tricts;  has  it  improved  in  the  last  year  or  twof 

Answer:  You  would  be  very  much  surprised  to  see  the  eagerness  of  the 
people  in  the  rural  districts  for  education.  They  are  certainly  making  the 
most  of  it.  But  Dr.  Saenz  will  talk  to  you  more  fully  about  that  kind  of 
work.  The  parents  go  to  school  with  the  children  and  sing  with  them,  go 
through  the  gymnastic  exercises  and  do  everything. 

Question:  Has  the  opposition  of  the  local  church  broken  down? 

Answer:  Yes,  in  certain  parts  of  the  country.  In  the  middle  states  not 
so  much  as  in  the  coastal  states. 

Question:  Since  the  University  is  subsidized  by  the  Government,  what 
freedom  of  expression  have  you  here?  Are  there  any  limitations^ 

Answer:  Absolutely  none.  Every  professor  is  free,  within  the  laws  of 
natural  morality,  to  express  his  own  ideas. 

Question  :  JVho  appoints  the  Rector? 

Answer:  The  President  of  the  Republic. 

(A  discussion  thereopon  arose  as  to  the  comparative  freedom  from  politi¬ 
cal  interference  of  college  presidents  in  the  United  States  and  in  Mexico  and 
it  was  agreed  generally  that  the  situation  in  Mexico  offered  no  more  of  a 
problem  than  did  many  of  the  state  universities  in  the  United  States.) 

Question  :  What  is  the  authority  which  selects  the  professors  in  the  vari¬ 
ous  faculties? 

Answer:  The  Director  of  the  Faculty  makes  to  the  Rector  a  proposal  for 
the  appointment  of  a  new  man,  and  the  Rector  forwards  this  proposal  to  the 
Minister  of  Education  who  is  the  political  head  of  the  University.  On  the 
recommendation  of  the  Rector  and  on  the  advice  of  the  Director  of  the 
Faculty  the  new  man  is  appointed. 

(Here  Dr.  Pruneda’s  secretary  entered,  giving  him  as  the  official  figures 
of  enrollment  in  the  University  11,149  students,  including  those  in  the 
Preparatory  School.) 

Question  :  Is  it  the  custom  for  the  professors  to  give  public  lectures  out¬ 
side  of  the  University? 

Answer:  Yes.  We  have  also  a  radio  broadcasting  station  from  which  all 
kinds  of  lectures  are  sent  out. 

Question:  What  percentage  of  enrollment  is  of  men,  and  what  is  the 
number  of  women? 

Answer:  In  the  Medical  School  we  have  about  1,600  of  which  500  are 
women,  including  those  studying  nursing  and  midwifery.  A  little  more  than 
3,000  of  the  total  enrollment  are  women  of  which  about  400  are  foreigners. 

Question:  What  is  the  annual  budget  of  the  University? 

Answer:  About  three  millions.  The  University  now  needs  no  endowment, 
however.  It  is  developing  its  own  funds;  the  students  are  now  paying  nom¬ 
inal  sums  for  their  tuition. 

Question:  When  was  the  University  separated  from  the  Church? 

Answer:  At  the  end  of  the  Independence,  it  began  to  change  slowly. 

(At  this  point  a  number  of  the  questions  that  were  asked  were  answered 
by  Dr.  Baranco,  the  Secretary  of  the  University.) 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


49 


Question:  Does  the  University  and  the  Government  encourage  teachers 
to  go  to  other  countries  for  summer  sessions? 

Answer:  Yes.  The  year  before  last  we  had  ten  young  fellows  in  the 
technical  schools  in  Germany,  some  in  France  and  some  in  the  United  States. 

Question:  Do  any  of  your  own  people  go  to  other  countries  for  educa¬ 
tion  and  if  so  to  what  countries? 

Answer:  Students  of  engineering  and  technical  subjects  go  generally  to 
the  States ;  art  students  go  to  Europe,  generally.  Practically  all  of  our  well- 
to-do  people  have  their  sons  educated  in  Paris  and  in  the  States.  How  many? 
A  great  deal,  especially  in  the  border  states. 

Question:  Are  there  still  many  villages  without  schools? 

Answer:  Yes,  but  the  President  of  the  Republic  wishes  to  have  at  least 
five  thousand  rural  schools  in  the  whole  Republic.  This  year  practically  all 
the  new  educational  appropriation  was  for  rural  schools.  President  Calles 
is  going  to  establish  some  big  agricultural  schools.  He  himself  is  specially 
interested  in  doing  this. 

Question  :  JVhat,  if  any,  has  been  the  effect  of  Protestant  education  on 
the  present  educational  philosophy ;  i.e.,  education  as  found  in  Protestant 
United  States?  What  effect  have  the  Mission  Schools  had  on  the  general 
educational  field  here? 

Answer:  The  mission  schools  have  been  so  few  in  number,  I  cannot  tell 
what  effect  they  have  had. 

Question:  What  is  done  to  assist  poor  students  at  the  University? 

Answer:  To  poor  students  that  prove  they  are  able  and  who  work  steadily 
we  give  free  tuition.  The  tuition  is  really  very  nominal:  fifty  pesos  a  year. 

Question  :  What  are  the  salient  features  of  the  culture  that  you  call 
Latin  or  Mexican? 

Answer:  In  the  higher  sense,  culture  is  not  national:  it  is  universal.  But 
there  are  certain  traits  and  ideals  common  to  the  Spanish  language  group 
and  the  political  ideas  and  the  history  of  the  race  which  make  for  a  certain 
common  culture  typical  of  a  people  and  a  nation.  To  make  more  conscious 
and  articulate  that  culture  which  is  universal  as  the  common  culture  of 
Mexico,  is,  I  should  say,  the  general  aim  of  our  work  here. 

Question:  To  what  extent  are  your  students  free  to  discuss  the  prob¬ 
lems  of  Mexico  and  to  what  extent  do  they  discuss  them? 

Answer:  In  every  school  there  is  a  student  society  which  meets  to  discuss 
current  questions.  At  the  coming  National  Student  Congress  in  Oaxaca 
they  will  be  getting  together  and  discussing  such  subjects  as  oil,  land,  etc. 
All  schools  name  two  or  three  delegates  to  discuss  political  and  social  ques¬ 
tions.  The  discussions  are  entirely  free  from  control  or  interference.  There 
are  great  varieties  of  opinion  expressed.  For  instance,  there  are  a  great  many 
Catholic  students  who  discuss  their  side  of  the  question.  If  the  students 
don’t  take  this  interest  and  discuss  things  there  isn’t  much  hope  of  progress. 
There  is  a  general  federation  of  students  in  which  every  student  is  repre¬ 
sented. 

Question  :  What  about  the  curriculum  in  these  rural  schools? 

Answer:  The  course  of  studies  in  the  rural  schools  is  different  from  that 
in  the  state  schools.  It  is  more  rudimentary  and  concerned  chiefly  with  the 
three  R’s,  with  teaching  these  people  a  sense  of  national  unity  and  with  teach¬ 
ing  them  ways  of  developing  their  local  natural  resources.  It  is  a  little  of 


50 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


everything:  elementary  education  and  practical  education;  agriculture,  hy¬ 
giene,  a  bit  of  civics  and  history,  how  to  read  and  write  and  to  use  their  hands 
and  heads  a  little  better.  The  students  from  these  schools  go  to  the  state 
schools  without  losing  any  time. 

Question:  Are  the  members  of  the  University  here  necessarily  in  sym¬ 
pathy  with  the  Governmentf 

Answer:  I  really  don’t  know  how  each  of  our  professors  think  and  feel 
about  that,  but  of  course  each  is  allowed  his  own  liberty  of  conscience.  One 
of  our  professors  recently  feeling  himself  not  in  accord  with  the  policies  of 
the  Government  sent  in  his  resignation.  The  Government  was  sorry,  but 
accepted  his  resignation,  and  he  left  in  high  esteem.  As  for  religion,  the 
religious  affiliation  of  students  or  teachers  is  never  questioned,  asked  for  or 
recorded. 


Address  by  Dr.  Puig  Casauranc, 

Secretary  of  Education 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen:  I  beg  your  pardon  for  my  bad  English,  but  I 
wish  to  say  some  words  to  you  in  your  own  language,  and  afterwards  Mr. 
Saenz,  who  speaks  English  fluently,  will  give  you  all  the  information  you 
require.  I  just  spoke  to  President  Calles  and  he  told  me  to  present  you  his 
best  regards  and  his  best  wishes.  On  Saturday  morning  he  has  made  arrange¬ 
ments  to  meet  you  and  to  tell  you  then  the  truth  of  whatever  you  may  wish 
to  know  in  the  hope  that  you  will  report  that  truth  to  the  United  States. 
We  sincerely  feel  that  we  have  done  our  best  to  foster  an  understanding  be¬ 
tween  the  peoples  of  the  United  States  and  Mexico.  We  have  not  concealed 
in  any  situation  our  real  purposes,  we  have  given  all  the  information  asked 
and  feel  exactly  as  Mr.  Herring,  the  director  of  this  conference,  said  some 
time  ago — that  we  have  all  one  purpose,  to  understand  Mexico  better  in 
order  to  interpret  Mexico  to  the  people  of  the  United  States.  He  said :  “We 
come  on  one  condition,  to  increase  the  friendship  between  the  two  republics; 
we  wish  to  know  something  of  the  problems  which  Mexico  faces  and  the 
way  in  which  she  is  meeting  these  problems ;  we  believe  that  each  country 
has  much  to  offer  the  other  through  the  interchange  of  ideals.” 

We  appreciate  these  noble  and  sincere  words  of  Mr.  Herring  and  you  can 
be  perfectly  sure  that  these  are  exactly  our  sentiments  and  ideas.  We  look 
for  a  better  understanding  of  both  peoples ;  we  know  that  there  are  many 
things  difficult  to  understand  about  a  people  in  such  very  different  circum¬ 
stances  as  the  people  of  Mexico.  The  life  of  the  nation  and  the  methods 
employed  cannot  be  the  same  here  as  in  the  United  States.  I  remember  that 
when  President  Calles  and  I  were  in  the  United  States,  some  days  before  he 
took  office,  some  people  in  New  York  asked  him  about  the  proceedings  for 
the  betterment  of  the  laboring  classes  in  Mexico.  President  Calles  said  that 
if  the  laboring  classes  in  Mexico  had  the  position  and  the  privileges  of  the 
laboring  classes  in  the  United  States,  surely  we  would  not  have  to  fight  for 
many  things  more — but  we,  he  told  them,  are  hundreds  of  years  behind 
progress  in  the  United  States.  I  remember  this  because  you  will  find  some¬ 
thing  similar  in  the  public  life  of  Mexico.  To  understand  this  country  it  is 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


51 


necessary  not  only  to  be  in  sympathy  with  the  better  classes,  classes  whose 
social  and  cultural  status  is  similar  to  that  of  the  upper  classes  in  all  parts  of 
the  world,  but  it  is  necessary  to  go  to  the  eighty  or  ninety  per  cent  of  the 
Mexican  people,  in  the  development  of  whom  lie  Mexico’s  greatest  problems. 
Then  you  will  be  in  sympathy  with  the  aspirations  for  social  and  economic 
betterment  of  the  big  mass  of  the  Mexican  people. 

The  President,  and  all  the  men  who  are  around  him  in  the  government 
have  constantly  in  mind  not  only  the  interests  of  this  better  class  b.ut  neces¬ 
sarily  the  interests  and  welfare  of  the  eighty  per  cent  of  Mexico  which  is 
really  living  in  another  age. 

I  am  going  to  impose  on  your  kindness,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  to  present 
to  you  in  as  brief  a  way  as  I  can,  the  origin  of  the  school  system  in  Mexico. 

We  have  in  this  country  a  dual  system  of  schools ;  we  have  a  state  system 
and  a  federal  system.  Each  state  has  its  educational  responsibility,  but  the 
Federal  Government,  in  order  to  aid  the  states,  has  established  a  federal  sys¬ 
tem  of  schools  throughout  the  republic.  We  have  to  remember  that  we  are 
dealing  with  this  dual  system  in  order  to  understand  the  situation. 

The  Federal  Government  is  solely  responsible  for  schools  in  the  Federal 
District  and  the  territories.  We  really  have  no  responsibility  except  what 
we  have  taken  upon  ourselves  in  the  states.  But  the  government,  from  the 
time  of  Madero  and  the  spread  of  the  revolutionary  spirit,  saw  the  need  of 
a  national  program  of  education  and  recognized  its  duty  to  go  out  into  the 
various  states  and  help  the  state  governments  with  their  responsibilities  in 
the  matter  of  education.  So  Madero  started  a  system  for  federal  schools  in 
states  that  had  been  unable  to  establish  an  adequate  system  of  their  own. 
Unfortunately  the  plans  of  the  Madero  administration  in  1913  could  not 
continue  on  account  of  the  revolution  and  it  was  not  until  the  administration 
of  Obregon  when  we  started  on  a  national  program  of  rural  education,  estab¬ 
lishing  rural  schools  throughout  the  states  supported  by  the  Federal  Govern¬ 
ment.  This  program  has  grown  and  President  Calles  has  gone  on  with  it 
until  now  we  are  really  proud  of  our  efforts.  We  are  doing,  we  feel,  as 
much  as  it  has  been  possible  to  expect  under  the  circumstances. 

Going  back  to  the  question  of  the  dual  system  you  must  remember  that 
there  are  other  schools  in  Mexico  besides  the  federal  and  state  schools.  In 
several  of  the  cities  there  are  municipal  schools  and  in  several  sections  county 
schools.  But  the  state  is  the  educational  unit. 

Now  these  systems  coincide  without  any  friction  because  the  field  is  so 
great  and  the  need  is  so  great ;  there  is  no  possibility  of  conflict.  Some,  day  in 
the  future,  however,  we  will  have  to  work  out  a  system  with  finer  co-ordina¬ 
tion,  as  in  the  United  States,  but  at  present  our  systems  answer  to  our  needs. 

The  Department,  in  plotting  out  the  educational  program  for  the  states, 
outside  of  the  Federal  Districts,  decided  that  it  would  be  best  to  go  to  the 
rural  districts  where  the  states  had  not  established  schools.  We  could  have 
taken  some  other  line,  perhaps  the  vocational,  elementary,  or  normal  training, 
but  we  decided  the  most  urgent  need  was  for  rural  one-teacher  schools. 
These  are,  of  course,  very  modest  establishments,  but  they  are  something  to 
begin  with.  They  are  so  full  of  life  and  enthusiasm  that  they  are  meeting 
with  the  full  approval  of  people  who  know  about  these  things.  Dr.  John 
Dewey,  who  visited  some  of  these  schools,  was  very  much  impressed  with  them. 

The  problems  of  Mexico  are  very,  very  many.  By  the  time  you  get  through 


52 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


with  your  welcomed  visit  in  Mexico  you  will  probably  come  to  the  conclu¬ 
sion  that  this  is  a  country  full  of  problems.  Consequently  not  only  we,  but 
others  are  always  trying  to  devise  solutions — and  people  become  popular,  now 
and  then,  by  finding  new  remedies  for  our  problems.  In  this  department  we 
have  been  forced  to  come  down  to  facts — to  brass  tacks,  as  you  say,  so  I  am 
going  to  state  our  program  in  the  terms  of  a  few  figures. 

Sixty-two  per  cent  of  the  people — over  eight  million,  are  illiterate,  counting 
children  and  adults  in  the  country  at  large.  The  proportion  of  illiteracy 
varies  from  state  to  state;  some  of  the  northern  states,  Tamaulipais  for  in¬ 
stance,  have  the  lowest  percentage  of  illiteracy.  There  the  percentage  is 
something  like  thirty-three  per  cent.  In  some  of  the  states,  as  in  Oaxaca,  it 
is  as  high  as  eighty-eight  per  cent.  This  is  very  large,  but  let  me  tell  you 
that  it  is  not  quite  as  large  as  even  we  ourselves  thought  because  many  times 
the  percentage  of  illiteracy  in  the  country  at  large  has  been  put  at  seventy- 
five  per  cent.  But  we  have  recently  devoted  a  great  deal  of  attention  and 
effort  to  gathering  correct  figures.  We  have  two  and  three-quarter  million 
children  of  school  age  and  we  have  only  one  million  of  these  in  schools.  That 
means  we  have  no  schools  in  Mexico  for  one  and  three-quarter  million  chil¬ 
dren.  When  I  say  we  have  no  schools  I  mean  that  exactly — there  are  no 
schools  for  them  to  go  to.  Education  is  compulsory  but  where  there  are  not 
enough  schools  for  children  to  attend,  we  cannot,  naturally,  compel  attendance. 
Of  course,  there  will  be  more  schools,  they  are  being  provided  as  rapidly 
and  in  as  many  districts  as  possible ;  but  meanwhile  one  of  the  most  disagree¬ 
able  tasks  for  us  here  in  this  department  is  that  of  refusing  schools  to  the 
people  where  there  are  over-crowded  school  rooms.  The  state  governments 
are  spending  on  an  average  40%  of  their  budgets  for  education;  some 
states  as  high  as  58%.  The  Federal  Government  is  spending  a  little  over 
8%  of  its  budget  for  education.  In  1910,  the  banner  year  of  the  Diaz 
regime,  the  Federal  Government  spent  only  6%  for  education.  We  are  now 
spending  over  8%  in  these  years  which  are  far  from  ideal  financially  for  us. 
This,  at  least,  shows  definitely  the  tendency  of  the  government. 

Last  year,  all  told,  we  had  in  Mexico  4635  rural  schools  supported  by  the 
state  systems,  and  2721  supported  by  the  Federal  Government,  making  a 
total  of  7356  rural  schools.  Elementary  schools  supported  by  the  state  sys¬ 
tems  numbered  4208.  Elementary  schools  supported  by  the  Federal  Govern¬ 
ment  numbered  693 ;  thus  making  a  total  of  12,257  schools  in  Mexico  in  1926. 
Total  enrollment  in  both  rural  and  elementary  schools,  federal  and  state,  was 
1,049,000  last  year.  Only  four  children  in  every  ten  go  to  school.  We  have 
no  reliable  figures  about  private  schools;  we  are  just  gathering  them  now. 
But  let  me  tell  you  that  there  are  not  as  many  private  schools  here  as  people 
in  the  United  States  seem  to  think.  Those  that  are  in  operation  are  mostly 
in  the  big  cities  and  in  the  capitals;  there  are  very  few  in  the  country.  I 
imagine  that  if  we  roughly  estimate  the  number  of  children  going  to  private 
schools  in  Mexico  and  add  that  number  to  those  going  to  the  public  schools, 
we  may  say  that  five  children  out  of  every  ten  are  going  to  school  in  Mexico 
now.  That  is,  four  to  the  public  schools  and  one,  more  or  less,  to  the  private 
schools.  The  ages  of  the  school  children  are  between  six  and  twelve. 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


53 


Address  by  Dr.  Moises  Saenz,  the  Under- Secretary 

The  thing  that  stands  out  in  our  program  is  the  rural  school.  When 
President  Calles  came  into  office,  he  instructed  Dr.  Puig,  the  Minister  of 
Education,  to  establish  at  least  1000  schools  a  year.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
about  the  first  thing  that  Dr.  Puig  told  me  when  he  came  into  this  office 
was:  “Well,  the  President  told  me  this  morning,  that  if  we  don’t  establish 
5000  rural  schools,  we  won’t  be  friends  any  more.”  In  spite  of  all  kinds  of 
difficulties,  we  are  trying  to  establish  this  number.  We  have  established  over 
half  and  have  two  years  to  go.  This  year  another  1000  will  be  established 
and  next  year  we  will  go  to  at  least  that  amount,  we  hope.  Of  course, 
establishing  1000  rural  schools  sounds  very  nice  and  easy  when  you  say  it 
in  this  office,  but  when  you  realize  that  we  have  to  discover  the  teachers  for 
these  schools  you  begin  to  understand  some  of  the  difficulties.  We  have  not 
only  to  improvise  the  teachers  but  we  have  to  scare  up  the  money.  A 
thousand  schools  means  in  round  figures  a  million  pesos.  We  have  figured 
out  the  cost  of  the  rural  school  to  the  last  cent.  Every  time  we  see  10,000 
pesos  not  immediately  in  use,  we  grab  them  and  that  means  10  rural  schools. 
But  we  have  money  enough  now  in  the  budget  for  1000  rural  schools  more 
this  coming  year,  thanks  to  the  leadership  and  genius  of  Dr.  Puig.  I  don’t 
know  how  he  manages,  it  is  always  sort  of  a  miracle  to  us! 

We  were  told  that  we  could  not  have  a  cent  more  in  our  total  budget  than 
we  had  last  year.  Now  last  year  we  had  twenty-six  million  pesos  and  we 
found  that  far  too  little  for  all  the  many  things  that  needed  to  be  done.  Of 
course,  in  Mexico  we  never  have  enough  money  for  anything — but  this  obli¬ 
gation  to  increase  the  educational  work  in  Mexico  could  not  be  ignored. 
In  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  could  have  no  greater  sum  of  money,  sacrifices 
were  made  under  the  leadership  of  Dr.  Puig  enabling  us  somehow  to  get  the 
requisite  million  pesos  for  the  establishment  of  the  additional  thousand  rural 
schools.  You  see,  the  most  urgent  need  is  to  get  down  to  fundamentals  and 
give  the  rudiments  and  elements  of  education  to  the  greatest  number  of 
people  in  Mexico.  And  the  most  important  thing  is  that  these  rural  schools 
are  already  working  miracles  in  the  morale  of  the  people  and  are  creating  a 
new  spirit  everywhere. 

Of  course  the  rural  schools  aren’t  our  only  interest  here  in  this  department. 
We  have  all  the  education  of  the  federal  district  and  the  supervision  of  the 
university  and  the  kindergartens.  In  the  states  we  have  a  number  of  ele¬ 
mentary  schools  in  some  of  the  towns  and  villages  and  then  in  the  capital 
of  each  state  we  have  established  a  sort  of  administration  school  to  stimulate 
local  action, — a  model  school  for  the  states  to  follow.  We  have  quite  a 
number  of  vocational  schools  in  the  states  and  throughout  the  republic.  The 
normal  schools  for  the  training  of  rural  teachers  for  these  new  schools  we 
are  now  establishing.  We  have  ten  of  these  in  different  states.  Of  course, 
each  state  has  its  own  normal  school  for  its  own  teachers  but  we  have  to 
establish  normal  schools  to  train  teachers  for  the  new  type  of  rural  school. 
We  get  a  building  and  some  land  and  select  fifty  young  men  from  different 
parts  of  the  state  (from  the  country  districts)  who  have  some  education  and 
bring  them  to  these  schools  (they  are  boarding  schools)  and  while  they  are 
getting  a  general  education  they  get  a  little  pedagogical  training  and  a  great 
deal  of  rural  occupational  work.  They  are  trained  there  for  two  years. 


54 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


The  Department  has,  of  course,  to  help  not  only  the  teachers  in  these 
federal  schools,  but  through  literature  and  publications  we  try  to  help  all 
teachers  in  Mexico,  so  we  have  a  Department  of  Publications,  the  output  of 
which  you  can  see  here  on  the  table. 

Question  :  All  this  material  for  rural  schools — how  much  of  it  is  furnished 
to  teachers  without  expense  to  them? 

Answer:  All  the  federal  teachers  get  the  material  free. 

Question:  You  don’t  supply  the  State  school  teachers  with  this,  do  youf 

Answer:  We  don’t  in  general  but  when  we  get  requests  for  any  of  these 
publications  we  supply  them  without  charge. 

Question  :  W e  have  heard  some  fine  things  about  the  character  and  con¬ 
secration  of  these  rural  school  teachers.  Won’t  you  say  something  more 
about  them? 

Answer:  They  are  conspicuously  fine!  You  may  be  interested  to  know 
that  we  grab  these  teachers,  as  I  said,  without  asking  very  many  questions 
as  to  their  scholarship.  We  want  people  full  of  enthusiasm  and  the  spirit 
of  service.  The  devotion  of  the  rural  teacher  is  simply  marvelous,  as  is  also 
their  morale  and  their  eagerness  for  work  in  spite  of  many  obstacles  and 
difficulties.  They  are  always  doing  something  for  their  people  outside  of  their 
regular  duties. 

They  teach  the  children  by  day  and  in  the  evening,  the  adults.  There  are 
no  lighting  systems  in  the  schools  and  the  adults  come  bringing  candles. 
There  is  no  lighting  system  but  there  is  the  new  spiritual  light  of  the  people. 
The  teacher  is  generally  nurse,  vaccinator,  advisor  in  matters  of  health,  sani¬ 
tation  and  hygiene,  personal  affairs,  letter-writer,  and  general  guide  in  all 
matters.  Some  of  the  schools  have  Parent-Teacher  Associations,  but  all  of 
them  have  some  kind  of  co-operative  society  for  the  children  and  the  parents 
so  that  the  rural  teacher  is  very  much  of  a  social  worker.  They  are  not 
hampered  by  academic  technique ;  where  they  see  that  a  thing  needs  to  be 
done,  they  go  ahead  and  do  it.  There  is  no  finer  sight  than  the  rural  teacher 
at  his  or  her  work,  and  no  one  with  a  spark  of  feeling  can  fail  to  be  moved, 
by  it.  Their  cultural  scope  is  broadened  by  traveling  groups  of  trained 
educators,  nurses,  home  economic  experts,  teachers  of  physical  culture,  who 
go  around  periodically  to  the  different  districts. 

Question  :  How  do  the  salaries  run  for  rural  teachers? 

Answer:  Two  pesos  a  day;  720  pesos  a  year. 

Question  :  How  does  that  compare  with  the  level  of  life  of  the  people 
among  whom  they  are  working? 

Answer:  It  is  a  bit  above  it. 

Question:  Are  the  priests  not  allowed  to  teach? 

Answer:  The  Mexican  Constitution  establishes  that  Catholic  priests,  or 
priests  of  any  religion,  cannot  have  in  charge  primary  schools,  or  teach  in 
them,  but  it  says  nothing  about  secondary  schools,  and  of  course,  vocational 
and  superior  schools.  During  this  time  of  “religious  persecution”  General 
Calles  signed,  about  one  month  ago,  a  law  establishing  that  no  authority, 
neither  federal  nor  local,  can  interfere  with  the  opening  of  secondary  schools 
and  the  Department  of  Education  has  supported  the  point  of  view  that  in 
these  secondary  schools  the  teachers  can  be  priests  of  any  religion.  So  that 
not  only  has  this  government  not  had  any  special  religious  persecution  in 
educational  matters  but  for  the  first  time  in  Mexican  history  there  has  been 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


55 


authorized  by  law,  the  right  of  priests  of  any  religion  to  teach  in  secondary 
schools.  It  may  be  of  interest  to  you  to  know,  furthermore,  that  the  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Education  has  an  edition  of  the  Gospels  which  it  distributes  freely. 

Question  :  Do  many  Catholic  laymen  teach  elementary  schools? 

Answer:  Yes.  We  don’t  ask  the  creed  of  people,  as  long  as  they  are  not 
priests  or  nuns. 

Question:  Who  decides  what  constitutes  “religious  education?” 

Answer:  We  only  consider  as  religious  education  the  teaching  of  religion 
where  the  school  is  directed  by  a  priest.  It  is  the  carrying  out  of  acts  of  the 
cult  and  having  a  definite  class  for  the  teaching  of  the  religious  creed.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  have  told  these  people  right  along,  that  outside  of  school 
hours  and  in  an  indirect  way,  which  is — by  the  way — the  only  way  to  teach 
religion — that  they  can  do  all  the  teaching  they  want.  We  forbid  them 
having  a  priest  as  a  director  of  the  school  and  having  a  class  for  catechism,  etc. 

The  educational  policy  of  the  Mexican  Government  protects  the  religious 
interests  of  the  people,  especially  of  the  Catholics.  The  law  establishes  that 
the  teaching  in  the  government  public  schools  shall  be  lay.  But  the  truth 
of  the  matter  is  that  until  President  Calles’  term  this  term  of  lay  education 
was  interpreted  as  making  propaganda  against  the  Catholic  religion.  In 
order  to  fulfill  the  law  and  not  to  antagonize  any  church  or  any  religion,  we 
had  to  provide  that  Catholic  schools  should  not  deal  with  those  matters  that 
provoked  the  reaction.  I  honestly  believe  that  there  is  not  a  public  school 
in  Mexico  that  has  a  word  against  any  religion,  and  that,  I  think,  is  a  pure 
gain  for  the  interests  of  the  Catholic  schools. 

Question  :  Suppose  one  of  your  own  official  teachers,  say  in  the  primary 
grades,  should  give  instruction  something  like  this:  that  there  is  a  God  and 
that  God  made  the  world.  Would  that  be  permissible? 

Answer:  Of  course! 

Question  :  JV ould  a  church  be  permitted  on  Sunday  or  after  school  hours 
to  conduct  a  Sunday  school  in  the  church  or  classes  in  the  catechism? 

Answer:  Certainly — in  the  church  building  but  not  in  the  school  buildings. 

Question:  Are  the  newspapers  permitted  to  criticise?  Is  there  a  free 
press? 

Answer:  Yes.  They  criticise  freely!  (Mexico  is  one  the  few  nations  of 
the  world  in  which  the  government  does  not  have  a  paper.) 

Question  :  Is  the  religious  press  as  free  as  the  secular  press? 

Answer:  For  the  religious  press  there  is  a  restriction:  it  may  not  comment 
on  political  affairs. 


56 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Address  by  Mr.  George  Wythe,  United  States 
Commercial  Attache  in  Mexico  City 

AT  THE  present  time  business  is  rather  bad  in  Mexico.  There  is  a 

/\  general  depression,  the  fundamental  reasons  being  the  lack  of  new 
X  capital  coming  into  the  country  and  the  diminishing,  or  at  least  the 

failure  to  increase,  the  production  of  the  most  important  industries  and 
agriculture. 

During  the  long  revolutionary  period  that  began  in  1910  and  1911  and 
continued  up  to  the  present  time,  the  foreign  element,  which  has  most  of  the 
large  businesses  and  enterprises  in  hand,  has  been  gradually  withdrawing. 
In  the  days  of  Porfirio  Diaz,  the  golden  age  in  Mexico,  everyone  was  always 
waiting — yes,  in  more  senses  than  one — waiting  for  opportunities,  openings 
— what  not !  But  now,  a  great  many  foreigners  have  seen  that  there  has 
been  no  use  in  their  waiting  any  longer  and  have  gradually  left  until  the 
number  of  foreigners  has  considerably  diminished.  And  not  only  the  foreign¬ 
ers.  Between  1910  and  1921  the  Mexican  population  decreased  by  1,000,000, 
and  it  has  gone  down  far  more  since  1921.  Between  one  and  two  million 
Mexicans  have  gone  to  the  United  States  and  if  conditions  remain  bad  these 
numbers  will  be  increased  heavily. 

Of  course,  the  Calles  Government  has  practically  taken  the  stand  that  the 
solution  of  educational  and  social  problems  should  take  precedence  over  indus¬ 
trial  and  economic  development.  And  the  laws  that  have  been  passed  in  the 
Calles  administration  have  practically  stated  that  they  do  not  want  any 
increase  of  foreign  capital,  especially  from  the  United  States.  So,  without 
passing  judgment  on  whether  this  is  good  or  bad,  it  inevitably  has  its  reaction 
on  the  present  situation. 

As  regards  the  decrease  in  productivity,  let  us  consider  first,  agriculture. 
There  are  no  reliable  statistics  from  which  to  judge  whether  agricultural 
production  is  greater  now  than  before  the  revolution,  but  it  seems  extremely 
probable  that  it  is  not.  Corn,  the  principal  crop,  has  slightly  decreased  over 
a  period  of  twelve  years,  although  on  the  other  hand,  wheat,  a  minor  crop, 
has  slightly  Increased.  Beans  and  chile,  supplementary  food  crops,  are  about 
the  same,  or  slightly  less.  However,  money  crops,  such  as  cotton,  sugar,  etc., 
have  substantially  increased,  but  they  have  not  brought  in  more  money  to  the 
farmer  for  the  reason  that  cotton  was  so  plentiful  it  brought  lower  prices 
and  the  planters  did  not  even  make  their  expenses  with  it.  The  cost  of 
production  of  sugar  is  so  high,  they  cannot  sell,  frequently,  except  at  a  loss. 
This  was  true  especially  during  this  past  year.  And  the  consumption  of 
sugar  was  much  less,  this  past  year,  than  usual. 

In  the  mining  industry,  which  was,  until  the  middle  of  1926  very  pros¬ 
perous,  there  is  a  bad  slump  at  present  due  to  the  decline  in  price  of  silver 
bullion  and  due  to  the  adoption  of  the  gold  standard  in  India  and  the  civil 
wars  in  China  which  have  brought  about  a  decrease  in  the  consumption  of 
silver.  In  many  of  the  mining  centers  several  thousand  men  have  been  put 
out  of  employment.  It  is  too  early  to  see  any  direct  effects  on  the  mining 
mdustry  of  the  new  mining  legislation,  but  the  new  laws  are  apt  to  affect  it 


ox  Relations  With  Mexico 


57 


unfavorably.  The  prospector  is  entirely  eliminated  by  the  new  mining  law 
and  it  is  the  prospector  who,  in  the  past,  has  done  most  of  the  pioneering  and 
developing  of  new  fields  of  activity. 

After  mining  is  petroleum.  As  is  well  known,  petroleum  production  has 
been  declining  since  1921,  and  during  the  present  year  at  a  fairly  rapid  rate. 
In  1925  the  oil  production  fell  off  seventeen  per  cent  as  compared  with  1924 
and  in  1926,  the  year  just  closed,  it  will  probably  be  as  much  as  thirty  per 
cent  or  more  less  than  the  previous  year.  These  figures,  as  you  will  see, 
indicate  a  rather  acute  economic  depression. 

My  principal  interest  in  this  situation  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  exports 
from  the  United  States  of  America  as  the  principal  function  of  the  office  of 
which  I  am  in  charge  is  to  promote  exports  from  the  United  States. 

As  is  quite  natural,  due  to  the  geographical  proximity  and  to  the  fact  that 
the  United  States  is  a  highly  industrialized  country  while  Mexico  is  relatively 
little  developed,  the  United  States  dominates  the  foreign  trade  of  Mexico. 
During  the  last  five  years  an  average  of  70  per  cent  of  Mexico’s  imports 
have  been  from  the  United  States,  while  the  United  States  has  taken  an 
average  of  75  per  cent  or  more  of  Mexico’s  exports.  It  may  not  be  generally 
recognized  hut  the  United  States  has  always  imported  more  from  than  it  has 
sold  to  Mexico.  Since  1856  these  imports  have  been  principally  oil,  silver 
and  other  minerals,  fibres,  produce  and  winter  vegetables,  silk,  sisal,  coffee, 
bananas,  etc. 

As  a  result  of  the  economic  depression  there  has  been  a  tendency  for  both 
imports  and  exports  to  decrease  since  the  middle  of  1925.  That  decrease  has 
been  from  13,000,000  to  10,000,000  pesos  per  month  and  will  perhaps  be 
9,000,000  for  December  last.  It  is  probable  that  the  United  States  will 
maintain  more  or  less  the  same  percentage  of  her  usual  share  of  Mexico’s 
foreign  trade ;  but  in  order  for  Mexico  to  buy  more  she  must,  of  course,  pro¬ 
duce  more  so  that  she  will  have  the  money  with  which  to  pay — and  the 
prospects  of  an  increase  in  production  during  the  next  year  or  two  are  not 
particularly  encouraging. 

I  would  not  like  to  be  in  the  position  of  prophecying,  because  with  regard 
to  Mexican  affairs,  as  with  the  California  weather,  a  prophet  is  either  a  fool 
or  a  newcomer.  Mexico  has  tremendous  resources  in  hardwoods  and  tropical 
products  which  are  increasingly  in  demand  in  the  United  States.  The  last 
five  years  in  the  United  States  have  seen  a  tremendous  movement  toward  the 
southern  part  of  the  United  States,  Florida  and  the  Rio  Grande  Valley, 
Corpus  Christi  and,  in  fact,  all  the  Gulf  region,  and  many  people  have  been 
wondering  why  the  success  of  the  Rio  Grande  Valley  could  not  be  duplicated 
just  across  the  border  in  Mexico.  Furthermore,  Mexico  is  now  in  a  better 
position  to  sell  her  products  at  good  prices  than  ever  before  because  she  pro¬ 
duces  those  things  that  the  United  States,  the  best  market  in  the  world,  needs 
and  is  willing  to  pay  for.  At  the  same  time,  the  experiences  of  recent  years 
do  not  lead  one  to  believe  that  there  will  be  any  noticable  or  immediate  im¬ 
provement  in  the  near  future. 

In  speaking  of  America’s  imports,  I  referred  to  sisal.  For  a  long  time 
Yucatan  had  the  monopoly  on  sisal.  It  was  quite  a  valuable  fibre  used  in 
the  making  of  the  cheaper  grades  of  rope  and  binder  twine.  However,  owing 
to  a  combination  of  political  and  other  circumstances,  sisal  plantations  were 
made  in  other  countries  and  the  monopoly  of  Yucatan  has  been  broken  and 


58 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


will  probably  never  again  exist.  So  that  has  reduced  the  price  of  sisal  fibre 
and  has  very  seriously  affected  the  prosperity  of  the  Yucatan  region.  Before 
the  revolution  there  were  large  rubber  plantations  in  Mexico  which  were 
just  about  to  come  to  productivity  at  the  time  the  revolution  broke  out.  But 
during  that  long  period  of  disturbance,  the  plantations  were  overgrown  with 
jungle.  The  Firestone  Company  attempted  last  year  to  restore  one  of  these 
plantations  but  after  six  months  of  greater  labor  than  rewards  they  withdrew. 
So  the  outlook  for  rubber  is  not  encouraging.  Coffee  has  just  about  held  its 
own  for  a  period  of  years  and  shows  no  tendency  to  increase  or  decrease. 

1  think  these  were  the  principal  things  I  had  in  mind  to  say  to  you.  Doubt¬ 
less  there  are  some  questions  you  would  like  to  ask? 

Question:  What  are  the  possibilities  for  industry  in  this  country? 

Answer:  In  the  time  of  Diaz,  the  protectionist  policy  was  adopted  by 
Mexico  and  rather  important  textile  industries  were  developed  and  also 
smaller  industries,  fostered  by  the  protective  tariff,  from  button  factories  up 
to  steel  mills.  The  president  of  Mexico  has  always  had  special  powers  in  all 
financial  matters.  This  is  a  very  important  point.  Practically  every  penny 
of  revenue  and  practically  every  penny  of  expense  is  authorized  and  con¬ 
trolled  by  the  President  (except  that  Congress  votes  its  own  salary  and  ex¬ 
penses).  But  after  Diaz  the  tariff  was  changed  overnight  without  warning, 
and  has  been  changed  frequently  from  time  to  time  on  raw  materials  and 
manufactured  products.  There  are  now  a  number  of  industries  fostered  by 
the  tariff  and  some  large  fortunes  have  been  made  by  some  of  them.  On 
some  products,  toilet  preparations,  medicinal  goods,  listerine,  tooth  paste,  etc., 
the  duties  are  at  present  so  high  that  these  articles  are  put  up  right  here  in 
Mexico  because  otherwise  they  could  not  be  sold  here. 

Question:  Is  there  much  unemployment  here? 

Answer:  Do  you  mean  here  in  the  capital?  When  Calles  first  came  into 
office  he  immediately  put  into  effect  a  program  of  economy  of  government 
administration  which  eliminated  for  a  part  of  the  time  several  thousand  gov¬ 
ernment  employes.  These  people  cannot  and  will  not  hold  other  than  a 
government  job  and  most  of  them  are  still  out  of  a  job.  They  represent  a 
real  problem  because  they  can  not  and  will  not  do  anything  else.  This  is  one 
class,  and  by  far  the  most  important  among  the  unemployed.  There  is 
relatively  little  hardship  among  the  unemployed  elsewhere  because  of  the  law 
requiring  three  months  pay  be  given  to  a  workman  on  discharging  him. 
There  is  enough  work  in  general  if  a  man  wants  to  work,  except,  of  course, 
men  in  the  mining  sections  and  the  oil  fields  who  are  let  out  and  who  can 
only  do  that  kind  of  work. 

Question:  What  is  the  amount  of  investments  by  Americans  in  Mexico? 

Answer:  There  never  has  been  a  careful  study  made  of  foreign  investments 
in  Mexico.  Some  of  the  largest  items  have  been  approximated.  About  57  per 
cent  of  the  oil  industry  is  American  capital,  about  90  per  cent  of  the  mining; 
of  the  foreign  land  owned,  50  to  65  per  cent  is  American  owned.  The  profits 
are  very  speculative  and  vary  a  great  deal  from  year  to  year.  Land  is  the  larg¬ 
est  single  investment  Americans  have  in  Mexico.  The  three  largest  sugar 
mills  are  owned  by  Americans.  Many  small  haciendas  owned  by  Americans 
have  made  money.  American  companies  have  irrigated  the  land.  Six  thousand 
carloads  of  winter  vegetables  were  raised  on  these  farms. 

Question  :  Is  water  available  so  that  irrigation  can  be  extended? 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


59 


Answer:  There  has  never  been  a  real  study  of  the  water  resources  of  Mex¬ 
ico.  Officials  of  the  J.  G.  White  Engineering  Company  told  me  that  when 
they  first  came  here  the  preliminary  studies  of  available  water  supplies  were 
practically  valueless.  They  have,  of  course,  during  the  year  they  have  been 
here,  made  a  large  number  of  studies  of  irrigation  projects  put  up  to  them 
by  the  Mexican  government.  A  large  hydro-electric  plant  is  being  planned 
now.  President  Calles  has  made  a  statement  that  during  his  terms  of  office 
he  expects  to  bring  under  irrigation  1,300,000  hectares  of  land. 

Question:  How  does  the  foreign  trade  today  compare  with  1910f 

Answer:  It  has  increased  very  much  in  money  value  and  in  volume  to  a 
certain  extent.  In  value,  from  two  to  three  times.  But  I  doubt  if  anything 
like  that  in  volume. 

Question:  Are  there  any  nations  that  have  made  more  increase  in  their 
trade  than  the  United  States? 

Answer:  During  the  war  the  United  States  practically  monopolised  the 
foreign  trade;  the  United  States  sold  90  per  cent  of  all  that  Mexico  imported. 
The  United  States  has  increased  more  than  other  countries.  Before  the  war 
our  average  was  less  than  60  per  cent  of  Mexico’s  imports ;  we  now  average 
a  little  over  70  per  cent.  Great  Britain  and  Germany  tie  for  second  place 
with  13  per  cent  each;  since  the  war  they  have  had  relatively  a  7  per  cent 
increase. 

Question:  What  proportion  of  the  government’ s  income  comes  from  taxes 
on  American  oil  companies? 

Answer:  In  1924,  the  revenues  derived  from  petroleum  were  fifty-four 
million  pesos  out  of  a  total  of  three  hundred  million  pesos,  but  since  that  time 
revenues  have  declined.  In  1926  the  revenues  from  petroleum  were  fifty 
millions.  A  little  over  half  of  this  would  be  derived  from  American  capital¬ 
ization. 

Question:  What  is  the  reason  for  ill  feeling  toward  Americans? 

Answer:  I  think  the  ill  feeling  is  toward  the  United  States  as  a  government 
and  not  toward  Americans  as  individuals.  The  United  States  government  in 
the  course  of  history  has  taken  away  over  one-half  of  Mexico’s  territory. 
They  are  always  fearing  that  we  may  take  the  other  half  some  day.  Some 
hope  it  and  some  fear  it.  Questions  of  dispute  between  the  two  governments 
naturally  give  opportunities  for  misunderstandings  but  on  the  other  hand  I 
don’t  think  I  have  ever  encountered  any  feeling  against  Americans  as  Ameri¬ 
cans.  The  Calles  government  is  frankly  nationalistic  and  therefore  anti- 
foreign,  but  he  has  sent  several  hundred  students  to  American  institutions  to 
study  our  ways;  Mr.  Calles  sends  his  own  children  to  a  Catholic  school  in 
California.  The  machinery  bought  for  the  agricultural  college  here  is  100% 
American,  the  installations  in  the  colleges  is  100%  American  and  in  the 
military  college  the  largest  part  of  the  equipment  is  American.  The  presi¬ 
dent  turned  down  the  Germans  when  the  hydro-electric  and  irrigation  pro¬ 
jects  were  proposed  and  favored  an  American  concern. 


60 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


Speech  by  Professor  Mendizabal,  in  the  Grotto 
AT  San  Juan  Teotihuacan,  January  2,  1927. 

Miss  Vesta  Sturgis,  Interpreter 

MISS  STURGIS. — I  will  make  this  introduction  as  brief  as  possible 
in  order  that  the  Professor  may  have  more  time  to  speak  to  you. 
Professor  Mendizabal  is  one  of  the  research  men  in  the  National 
Museum  and  until  January  first,  last  year,  he  was  director  of  the  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Ethnography.  He  resigned  that  post  in  order  to  carry  forward  his 
own  independent  research  work.  I  think  there  is  no  one  in  the  world  who 
has  deciphered  as  many  and  as  important  codices  in  the  ancient  writings  that 
have  been  preserved  in  Mexico.  As  they  become  more  widely  known.  Pro¬ 
fessor  Mendizabal’s  name  is  recognized  in  connection  with  certain  conclusions 
drawn  from  these  stones.  Some  of  these  conclusions  with  regard  to  the 
ancient  races  and  their  cultures,  the  result  of  Professor  Mendizabal’s  recent 
extensive  explorations  in  Yucatan  and  Guatemala,  he  is  to  give  to  you  now 
for  the  first  time  anywhere. 

(The  Address.)  Professor  Mendizabal  is  going  to  give  us  briefly  an  idea 
of  the  very  complicated  social  phenomena  which  have  evolved  in  this  region. 
Academic  historians,  archaeologists  and  ethnographers  have  made  extensive 
researches  into  the  old  Mexican  civilizations  and  have  given  us  representations 
and  interpretations  of  the  ancient  cultures  dissociated  from  actual  life  and 
exceedingly  complex  and  contradictory,  but  the  tendency  of  the  latest  research 
work  is  to  bring  these  people  into  relation  with  their  environments  and  to 
explain  them  in  that  connection.  For  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that  all  the  highly 
developed  cultures  of  ancient  Mexico  have  evolved  within  a  given  geo¬ 
graphical  setting. 

There  are  principally  these  geographical  divisions,  these  geographical  frame¬ 
works  within  which  developed  the  native  cultures :  the  central  plateau  center¬ 
ing  in  the  Valley  of  Mexico — the  Isthmus  region  reaching  to  Guatemala 
— the  region  of  Oaxaca — and  the  region  of  Michoacan.  But  these  several 
cultures  are  so  closely  interrelated  that  they  may  well  be  said  to  be  one  general 
culture  with  appropriate  local  variations.  The  variations  in  these  social 
groups  or  cultures  are  due  largely  to  the  various  sources  of  their  populations. 
There  were  three  trends  of  peoples,  three  migratory  movements  over  the  land, 
which  resulted  in  the  civilization  of  pre-conquest  Mexico.  There  was  a 
western  stream  of  people  with  a  Totemic  level  of  culture,  a  central  stream 
of  a  sub-Arctic  culture,  and  an  eastern  stream  comprising  people  who  had 
arrived  at  a  logical  level  of  culture.  These  migratory  streams  undoubtedly 
encountered  on  their  travels  in  Mexico  a  homogeneous  population,  also 
characterized  by  the  Totemic  level  of  culture  whose  economic  basis  was  rudi¬ 
mentary  and  whose  art  corresponded  with  the  Shellean  period  as  identified 
by  European  ethnographers. 

Very  painstaking  research,  during  the  past  few  years,  has  led  Mr.  Men¬ 
dizabal  to  the  conclusion  that  the  direction  of  these  streams  of  population  was 
determined  by  their  need  to  locate  sources  of  supply  of  salt.  Impelled  by  the 


ON  Relations  With  Mexico 


61 


need  for  salt  and  governed  in  their  wanderings  by  the  triangular  shape  of 
Mexico  which  served  as  an  automatic  concentrator  of  their  movements,  the 
central  part  of  Mexico  where  salt  was  found  in  abundance  thus  became  the 
center  in  which  these  streams  of  peoples  converged.  There  was  therefore 
incorporated  in  their  unfolding  civilizations  the  three  cultures  involved — the 
Totemic,  the  Sub-Arctic  and  the  so-called  logical  cultures. 

The  form  of  organization  determined  by  these  facts  was  as  follows:  The 
group  that  represented  the  Totemic  culture  became  the  great  mass  of  com¬ 
moners  and  artificers  and  working  people.  The  group  characterized  as  Sub- 
Arctic  were  the  hunting,  fishing  and  migratory  peoples;  they  were  unassimil- 
able  and  have  remained  so.  The  group  characterized  by  the  logical  level  of 
culture  who  ^ome  in  the  eastern  trend  of  population  provided  a  basis  of 
mysticism  for  the  religious  thought  of  the  whole  people,  which,  naturally 
being  an  astronomical  religion  impressed  those  of  the  lower  type  of  culture. 
The  Totemic  group,  comprising  mostly  the  artisans  and  workers,  passed  under 
control  of  this  more  intellectual  group,  and  provided  the  labor  from  which 
was  built  the  great  edifices  which  characterized  these  highly  developed  cul¬ 
tures.  Mr.  Mendizabal  gives  a  very  interesting  example  of  the  fusion  of 
these  two  cultures — the  Totemic  with  the  Almecan.  The  peoples  who  came 
in  the  western  stream  of  migration  had  as  a  numen  of  their  Totemic  culture, 
the  god  of  the  hunt,  the  god  of  the  deer,  which  was  represented  in  their 
cosmogeny  by  the  star  Venus.  Therefore  the  evening  was  of  importance  in 
their  psychology.  In  the  cosmogeny  of  the  eastern  people  this  god  de  los 
Venidos  was  the  god  of  the  evening  wind.  The  priesthood  brought  about  a 
fusion  of  these  two  so  similar  religious  concepts  in  a  cult — the  cult  of  Quet- 
zalcoatl,  which  was  the  dominating  cult  of  the  fused  peoples.  The  group 
which  therefore  obtained  theocratic  control  imposed  its  culture  on  the  other 
group  but  because  numerically  it  was  weaker  it  did  not  impose  its  language 
but  was  itself  absorbed  in  the  language  of  the  incoming  group. 

This  western  stream  of  migration  included  many  peoples  who  are  known 
by  the  general  name  of  Nahuas,  and  the  language  therefore  of  this  fusion  of 
groups  and  cultures  was  Nahuatl. 

In  the  entire  route  which  is  traceable  of  the  Nahuatl  migrations,  Arizona, 
Sonora,  Sinola,  Jalisco,  Michoacan,  there  is  absolutely  no  vestige  of  pyramic 
construction,  although  the  course  of  the  eastern  movement  is  clearly  marked 
with  the  vestiges  of  pyramidal  constructions  from  the  eastern  part  of  what 
is  now  the  United  States  in  the  rudimentary  remains  known  as  the  mounds 
of  the  Mound  Builders,  which  were  the  precursors  of  the  pyramidal  con¬ 
structions  here  in  Mexico,  to  the  very  pyramids  which  are  here  now. 

The  pyramid  is  the  unmistakable  characteristic  of  an  astronomical  cult. 
The  remains  which  we  have  of  pre-conquest  writings  testify  to  this.  The 
western  stream  of  people  practiced  interior  rites  enclosed  within  straw- 
thatched  edifices.  But  the  members  of  the  highly  evolved  astronomical  cult 
partook  of  the  same  social  life  as  the  members  of  the  lower  strata  who  pro¬ 
vided  all  the  material  labor  represented  in  these  magnificent  remains  of 
these  ancient  civilizations. 

The  culture  of  Central  Mexico  evolved  on  this  basis:  a  small  group  with 
a  very  theocratic  organization  controlling  a  very  large  group  of  workers.  The 
old  chronicles  describe  many  of  the  circumstances  which  brought  to  pass  the 
disruption  of  the  social  structure.  In  the  course  of  time  the  subjected  people 


62 


Proceedings  of  the  Seminar 


became  stronger  and,  aided  by  related  peoples  living  outside  the  influence  of 
the  strong  pressure  from  the  central  organization,  were  finally  able  to  over¬ 
throw  this  social  structure.  The  mainsprings  which  produce  social  events  are 
always  in  history  involved  with  events  of  a  political  or  religious  nature  and 
so  likewise  in  the  society  represented  by  this  culture  at  Teotihuacan.  The 
people  who  represented  the  Totemic  psychology  and  the  ancient  Totemic 
culture  gradually  gathered  around  a  priesthood  which  thus  rose  and  grew 
strong — a  priesthood  derived  from  an  ancient  legendary  figure  of  the  Totemic 
culture,  Tezcatzlipoca.  For  many  centuries  their  calendar,  their  chronology, 
had  been  controlled  by  the  moon  with  the  result  that  their  year  was  a  lunar 
year  with  subdivisions  corresponding  to  lunar  months.  This  cult,  the  moon 
cult,  was  the  cult  of  the  Nahuas.  Now  the  astronomical  observations  of  the 
Almecan  people — those  of  the  Eastern  trend  of  population — led  them  to  the 
realization  that  five  visible  conjugations  of  Venus  to  the  sun  were  equal  to 
eight  lunar  calendar  years.  Hence  they  formed  a  calendar  based  on  that  com¬ 
putation  without  changing  the  lunar  calendar  of  the  Nahuatl  people.  So, 
in  the  early  ages  of  the  fusion  of  these  people,  the  two  calendar  systems  were 
fused  without  wounding  the  religious  consciences  or  sensitivities  of  the  Nahuas. 

In  the  course  of  time  the  more  progressive  astronomers  of  the  Almecans 
began  to  announce  new  findings  and  truths.  But  the  main  body  of  the  priest¬ 
hood  feared  the  blow  to  their  prestige  that  these  new  ideas  might  bring  and 
began  to  work  for  control  of  the  masses,  and  finally  secured  that  control  and 
overthrew  the  Almecan  leaders.  The  control  of  this  region,  therefore,  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  Nahuas,  representing  the  Totemic,  and  the  Altomese, 
representing  the  Sub-Arctic  cultures.  There  remained,  of  course,  represen¬ 
tatives  of  the  old  controlling  group  from  whom  they  continued  to  receive 
intellectual  guidance.  The  so-called  Aztec  culture  then,  that  with  which 
the  European  invasion  came  in  contact,  was  a  people  made  up  principally  of 
those  of  the  Totemic  and  Sub-Arctic  cultures — the  Nahuas  and  the  Altomese 
— their  civilization  being  guided  and  directed  and  in  the  hands  of  a  small 
intellectual  group  of  Almecans  who  had  conserved  the  heritage  of  science 
and  wisdom  of  the  preceding  dynasty. 

The  European  invasion  entirely  destroyed,  first  of  all,  this  intellectual 
group.  And  as  this  group  kept  strictly  in  its  own  hands  the  secrets  of  its 
science,  its  wisdom  was  destroyed  with  them. 

These  events  repeated  themselves  in  each  of  the  population  centers,  the 
cultural  centers,  which  Mr.  Mendizabal  referred  to  at  the  beginning:  Central 
Mexico,  Southern  Mexico,  Oaxaca,  Michoacan,  etc.,  and  these  peoples  were 
not  advanced  intellectually  or  culturally  by  the  European  invaders  because  it 
was  not  to  their  purposes  to  do  so.  Between  given  individuals  of  a  logical 
type  of  culture  and  those  of  a  Totemic,  there  is  no  physical  difference.  It  is 
entirely  a  matter  of  mental  training. 

As  the  rural  population,  which  is  the  indigenous  population,  and  may  well 
be  said  to  include  the  entire  Mestizo  population  also,  has  not  had  education 
from  the  hands  of  the  Church  and,  by  way  of  further  education,  have  only 
had  added  to  their  theogony  further  religious  dogma,  their  mentality  has  not 
evolved.  This  is  the  fundamental  educational  problem  of  Mexico  and  this 
is  the  reason  for  the  great  desire  of  the  present  government  and  the  whole 
revolutionary  movement  in  Mexico  to  free  the  people  radically  from  the  four 
hundred  years  of  clerical  tutelage  which  they  have  had ;  to  teach  them  to  think 
for  themselves,  beginning  at  the  beginning  with  very  simple  ideation. 


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